Bowles Talks Trash

Writing blog posts is like making bread. You have to work the dough and work it, and work it some more. So today I review my posts from yesterday. And don't you know, there's something else I have to say.

Something stuck in my craw yesterday, from the Parade article. It was this remark from Erskine Bowles:

It’s really hard. We could end up walking away with nothing. But we are working together to come up with a commonsense solution. In ‘97, there wasn’t a soul who believed we could balance the budget, but we did.

In ‘97, there wasn’t a soul who believed we could balance the budget, but we did.

Erskine's magic, then, was that after starting with nothing in 1997, the budget was balanced by 1998. But that's not magic. It's trash. It stuck in my craw yesterday, and I did nothing about it. I figured it'd work itself out. But today, just now, I was reviewing my other post from yesterday, the one with federal deficit numbers, and I just started coughing it up.

Here's a brief summary of federal deficits:

The federal deficit hit a bottom at $290 billion in 1992. From that point there was continuous improvement, deficit reduction, until we achieved a budget surplus in 1998. And for two years after that the improvement did not let up.

Let's not talk about policy here, or who gets the credit. Let's look at what Erskine Bowles said. He said that in 1997, nobody had a clue we'd be able to balance the budget. But look at the graph. Look at where we were in 1997, with that very short blue bar indicating a budget very nearly in balance already.

Look at where we were in 1992, and look at the trend from 1992 to 1997, and tell me you agree with Bowles that no one thought we'd be able to balance the budget. I don't agree with Erskine Bowles on that.

Erskine, I gotta tell ya: If you want to fix the economy, ya gotta stop makin' up stories. Ya gotta start being honest about it. That's step one.