Say It Ain't So, David...

Any story about the U.S. deficit today that does comparisons between the U.S. and Europe aiming to inform its readers really needs to make six points:

Starting around 2020 the U.S. has to finally solve the problem that Ronald Reagan created in the 1980 presidential campaign with his claim that the federal government could tax like Alabama and spend like Connecticut and somehow everything would work out. It won't. The U.S. has another decade to decide whether it wants to tax like Alabama...