Why have recent Presidents and Congress had such difficulties in reducing the Federal budget deficit?
I received this question from a student in of American Government in the U.K. I answered: I have a link on my site to the Washington Post’s budget deficit (now surplus) page. There is a short explanation there. By and large, the problems in trying to reduce the deficit have been the perennial human propensity to want to spend and pay later. Americans love their government and its services but they hate the taxes that it takes to pay for them. And politicians get elected when they do what the electorate wants – spend and not tax! American politics is not geared very well to act in the absence of an evident crisis. This has its benefits, but it does not make for economic rationality. The deficit kept getting larger and larger every year, so large that it could not be addressed by mere politicians. But the annual amounts did not seem to be all that bad, and curbing them would have taken budget cuts (unpalatable) and increasing taxes (also unpalatable). Without Presidential leadership, the
