NPR Missed the Recession

In a segment of Morning Edition where Scott Horsley discussed the budget negotiations [no link yet], he told listeners that we face a large debt because Congress likes to spend money. This is like saying that firefighters spray water on buildings because they like to spray water from hoses.

The proximate cause of the large budget deficit, as every budget analyst knows, is the economic downturn caused by the collapse of the housing bubble. If Congress opted not to spend money, then the...