I promised over the weekend that I had much more to say about Saturday's Washington Post editorial on the deficit that was...well...completely wrong.

Take a look.

Wars and Health Care Reform Should Both Be Paid For

Oct. 27, 2009
By Stan Collender
Roll Call Contributing Writer   

The Washington Post ran a budget-related editorial on Saturday (“A critical question”) that attempted to explain why it insists that health care reform not increase the deficit even though it doesn’t believe that spending for activities in Iraq and Afghanistan have to be offset. The Post’s arguments weren’t just unconvincing, they also don’t make any sense.

Every other budget summit has been held when a deal had to be reached more or less immediately.  In all of those cases, a summit was needed because there was some type of budget stalemate between Democrats and Republicans, the House and Senate, or Congress and the White House (or all of those) and there was a great deal of pressure on everyone in the room to come to some agreement.  The stalemate, and therefore, the summit, usually occurred late in the budget process.

But none of these things are the case now and that means that the Obama budget summit being held at the White House on Monday is going to be very different than the ones we’ve had before.  The differences:

•    There is no need to reach a budget deal this year.  Deficit reduction is not the appropriate fiscal policy in the current economic environment and few are seriously suggesting that the summit needs to produce an agreement.  In other words, we don’t actually need the summit to do anything.

•    This summit is happening at the start of the budget process rather than towards the end.

•    There’s no stalemate that has to be resolved.

Duh!

The Associated Press is reporting this morning what everyone already knows: the Congressional Budget Office will project that the deficit will increase from fiscal 2007 to 2008. Including the not-yet-but-absolutely-certain-to-be-proposed-and enacted supplemental appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2008 deficit will reach about $250 billion, a $90 billion or so increase from the $162 billion deficit in 2007.

An economic stimulus is all the rage in Washington these days.  The president says he is seriously considering one and may reveal it in his State of the Union Address; congressional Democrats are talking about one of their own that could be announced before the SOTU occurs.