E. J. Dionne Jr. in full-out denial on federal deficit and debt

“Crisis” is one of those word frequently used by liberals as they refer to problems with the education system, obesity and health care. But labeling the federal government’s deficit and $14 trillion debt as a crisis? Oh hell no! It’s simply a problem.

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne really does not think we’re broke.

“We’re broke.”

You can practically break a search engine if you start looking around the Internet for those words. They’re used repeatedly with reference to our local, state and federal governments, almost always to make a case for slashing programs — and, lately, to go after public-employee unions. The phrase is designed to create a sense of crisis that justifies rapid and radical actions before citizens have a chance to debate the consequences.

Oh, you mean like the health care crisis that demanded Congress take action immediately before people died? The rapid and radical actions Congress took were so rapid and radical we just found out we’re there is an additional $105 billion of spending that we did not really know about.

From the American Spectator.

Dionne may be technically right that we are not at this moment in a state of fiscal crisis, although, as Matt Welch points out, there are plenty of local governments that are literally bankrupt, and all the projections for the federal government are not much brighter.

And there may be, on paper, “many different paths” to fixing budgets (although the route he hints at — taxing the “wealthiest among us” is not one of them). The problem is that there are a lot of interests, lawmakers, voters, etc. making it more complicated.

Dionne was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell yesterday.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_VsFodd-7c