Washington • Today’s political discord is less durable and dangerous than a consensus, one that unites the political class more than ideology divides it. The consensus is that, year in and year out, in good times and bad, Americans should be given substantially more government goods and services than they should be asked to pay for.
Lamentations about the paucity of bipartisanship ignore the permanent, powerful incentive, which both parties share and indulge, to run enormous deficits, thereby making big government cheaper, for the moment. Government borrows part of its costs; the borrowing’s burden falls on future generations.