An Exercise in Fiscal Evasion

An Exercise in Fiscal Evasion

When it comes to serious, lasting budget constraints, our leaders in Washington have the escape talents of Houdini. The ominous approach of the fiscal cliff put Democrats in a position to extract a lot more revenue and Republicans to force real spending cuts. That prospect drove the two sides to agree that the only reasonable option was neither.

They fixed the budget the same way they always fix it: wrapping it up with a big red bow and shipping it to the taxpayers of the future. As Robert Bixby of the fiscal watchdog group The Concord Coalition puts it, the deal "requires...