Althouse.... The Stupidity Rays... Are Overwhelming...

Must... surf away... from Ann Althouse's website.... The stupidity rays are overwhelming.... They are too strong... I'm weakening fast... AAAUUUGGGHHH!

Ann Althouse writes:

Althouse: "The long-term [budget] prognosis is still very, very bleak, and the administration doesn't have any kind of long-term plan.": That's the Democratic response to this news: "An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the budget deficit this year..."

No, Ann. That's not just the Democratic response. It's the non-insane Republican response too. It's the response of George W. Bush's first two chairs of his Council of Economic Advisers, Glenn Hubbard and Greg Mankiw. It's the response of everyone except you and your narrow and shrinking circle of koolaid-drinking friends:

Greg Mankiw's Blog: Hubbard on the Fiscal Future: Economist Glenn Hubbard (who preceded me as CEA chair and is now back at Columbia) has an op-ed in [the April 17] Wall Street Journal. He reminds us that unless we see significant entitlement reform, taxes are heading [much] higher:

Imagine the nightmare of a tax burden 50% higher -- not so farfetched as it sounds.... The Congressional Budget Office regularly quantifies these shadows of the Ghost of Tax Day Future. Their forecasts are not sanguine. A generation from now, absent any changes, increases in Social Security and Medicare spending alone are projected to consume 10 more percentage points of national GDP than they do today.

There is nothing very new here, but it is good to have Glenn saying it anyway. As George Orwell once said, "We have now sunk to a depth where the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."

I'll excuse you for thinking that there's $100 billion of good news on the fiscal 2006 budget deficit because that's what Edmund Andrews told you. But don't do it again, OK?