Brad DeLong offers this chart:
The reason to be concerned about the long-term deficit is that the basic underlying concept of Medicare—the government will pay for health care for old people—implies a gigantic long-term fiscal shortfall. There’s no reason to be concerned about the short-term deficit. As for the medium-term, the main reason to worry is that the odds are pretty good that a Republican President will be inaugurated in 2013 or 2017 and embark on a program of deficit-inducing tax cuts and defense spending hikes. That, at any rate, is the historical pattern.
Previous in TP Yglesias
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