There can be no serious doubt that our current budgetary policy path places us at needless risk of a major fiscal meltdown. It remains unclear, however, whether such a “hard landing” is more likely or less likely than a scenario in which revenues and outlays adjust sooner and more gradually. This is in large part a question about our political system and its capacity to yield mature and responsible policy decisions.

To understand the politics of narrowing the fiscal gap, a lot more is needed than just denunciation of the last few years of federal budgetary policy. I see the needed analysis as having five stages. First, what were the politics of creating the fiscal gap? Second, what led to the political consensus from 1982 through 2000 that favored deficit reduction and thus – however imperfectly, given the flaws in the measure – a narrowing of the fiscal gap? Third, why did that consensus collapse?