My "Fiscal Fitness" column from this week's Roll Call is about John McCain's promise to balance the budget by 2013.

Comments much appreciated.

It’s a Case of Murder on the Budget Express
July 8, 2008

There’s a great scene from the 1974 movie version of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” where her iconic ace detective, Hercule Poirot, wonderfully played by Albert Finney, talks about the number 12.

My weekly column from Roll Call:

Here's my column from this week's Roll Call newspaper. 

Here's my "Fiscal Fitness" column for this week from Roll Call.

Bush Budget Legacy:
Much More Debt,
Far Fewer Options

May 13, 2008

At the same time that the three main reality shows — “American Idol,” “Dancing With the Stars” and the 2008 election — are dominating much of the water cooler talk these days, I’m increasingly haunted by something George W. Bush promised as he was entering the White House: He said he would eliminate the national debt by the end of this decade.

That pledge was made for two reasons. First, federal budget surpluses were recorded from fiscal 1998 to 2001. Even though the surpluses were unexpected and no one was really sure why they happened, the president and almost everyone else assumed that, after four years in a row, they would continue.

Here's my weekly column from Roll Call.

Here's my "Fiscal Fitness" column from Roll Call.

The Checks AreComing!

TheChecks Are Coming! 

Here's this week's column from Roll Call.

Budget Spinning:
What It’s Called Is More Important
Than What’s Done

You really can’t help but be impressed at the extraordinary efforts the White House and Congress make during a federal budget debate to get people to think they’re doing something different than what’s actually being done.

The typical way is to give what they’re doing a new and totally misleading name so they can get people to agree to something they would never agree to otherwise.

The best example used to be the “death tax.”

Several years ago, when the opponents of the federal estate tax decided to make a serious effort to get it reduced or eliminated, they came up with the absolutely brilliant public relations strategy to build support by changing its name. Instead of the estate tax, they started to refer to it as the death tax.

Here's this week's "Fiscal Fitness column from Roll Call.

Fiscal 2010 Budget Fight Will Make All Others Look Easy 

April 15, 2008
By Stan Collender,
Roll Call Contributing Writer
 

I wish I could tell you that the timing of this week's "Fiscal Fitness" and this article in today's Wall Street Journal by Glenn Hubbard and John Cogan was choreographed.  It wasn't.