Everywhere the short-term fiscal pain is much smaller than the long-term mess that lies ahead.
As Kent Smetters, a former Bush Treasury official now at the Wharton School, points out, the first-term tax cuts and spending decisions have worsened America's long-term fiscal imbalance by three times more than the pensions shortfall that the president is so worried about.This budget may well make the longer-term mess worse.
The term "hot mess" has been floating around for a fair old time.
But in the longer term a mess of factors hinder people's capacity to make do, according to the preliminary results of our new research.
He said the plan "involved difficult decisions about spending, about getting our deficit down" but claimed: "We are on the right track, we should stick to that track, recovering our economy getting jobs for our people and over time really fixing for the long term the mess we were left in the public finances".
David Brooks ("Grading the President," column, June 1) wonders why the Bush administration, having refused to offer tax cuts "distributed down the income scale," and having "left us with a long-term fiscal mess," doesn't now "address the long-term problems".
There will be no progress on solving the country's medium-term budget mess, even as concerns about the deficit forestall any short-term measures to boost employment or prop up demand.
The whole thing was, in American terms, a mess.
"And the proposed clauses on tenure and on abandonment are badly drafted and in legal terms, a mess".
He gave Congress a scolding at Jackson Hole, arguing that politicians need to address the medium-term fiscal mess while leaving room to cushion the economy now.
