How To Balance The Budget

David Brooks shares his view:

My view is data based. The international evidence shows that if you want to balance the budget, something like 66 percent to 80 percent of your effort should go into cutting spending and something like a third to a fifth should consist of tax increases. If you rely on tax increases too much, you end up messing up the incentives for people who save and invest. Also spending cuts on entitlement programs have been the most enduring way to change long term fiscal trends. Cuts in other spending are too trivial to make a difference and don’t last because politicians reverse themselves.

Agreed on all counts. But can the GOP accept even this degree of compromise? And could Obama bring Pelosi along? It seems to me that next year will be the acid test of "Goodbye To All That." If wrecking America's finances was Bush's legacy, restoring them should be Obama's.