Take Your Pick: Reckless or Feckless?

The historian Alan Brinkley has observed that we will soon enter the fourth decade in which Congress — and therefore government as a whole — has failed to deal with any major national problem, from infrastructure to education. The gridlock isn’t only a function of polarized politics and special interests. There’s also been a gaping leadership deficit.

– Frank Rich on the States of the Union and of Congress

George W. Bush had a much easier time enacting his agenda because he simply decided to finance the entire thing with borrowing and got his party to go along.

The second problem is that, even if Democrats could reduce the deficit on their own and somehow could be insulated from the political harm, they have no incentive to do it. Why should they, when the Republicans don't share the goal? [...] There's no set of fiscal circumstances under which Republicans would not enact large tax cuts if given the votes to do so.

– Jonathan Chait, on the impossibility of fiscal restraint