What’s wrong with this picture? New budget numbers out today point to a $100 billion dollar federal deficit this year. That’s not quite in the neighborhood of the bad old days of the Bush I presidency. But it’s getting pretty close.
At the same time, Congressional Democrats can mount no more than a languid and ineffectual fight against making the Bush tax cut and the estate tax repeal permanent — something which will even further balloon these numbers.
At the Crossfire party night before last, one of the Democratic party’s shrewdest strategists — for my money, the shrewdest actually — told me that he thought that the Democrats’ inability to make a more effective argument against the estate tax repeal cuts to the heart of their current problems.
I couldn’t agree more.
PS. More later on the Republicans’ ridiculous and pitiful threats to boycott the new Crossfire and why there weren’t any Republicans at the Crossfire party.
