Marketplace

I'm always impressed by the number of people who call or e-mail me (or my Beautiful and Talented Wife -- The BTW) after hearing my interviews on Marketplace, that wonderfully quirky and literate business-finance-economics show on NPR and produced by American Public Media that's heard in drive time across the U.S. each weekday.

The interview below aired last Friday and, as usual, the calls were nice to receive. 

Can this really be happening?  Is every bad or failed budget idea from the 1970s to the 1990s coming around again and being discussed as if the failure never happened?  Doesn't anyone have a memory?  Does no one remember the pain?  Are we in an endless budget version of the movie Groundhog Day?

First revenue sharing was being seriously proposed.  Then government shutdowns started to be discussed again as if they're a serious way to govern.  And now, it's...wait for it...two-year federal budgets as the cure-all for the fiscal ills of the country.

Here's what I said yesterday on NPR's Marketplace about biennial budgets.  (Hint: I didn't pull any punches.)

The national debt is not usually news.

Except when it's not increased by the time the government's existing debt ceiling is reached and the Treasury has to do some interesting things to manage cash flow, federal borrowing is seldom widely reported. When it is, it's usually only of interest to Wall Street and mentioned mostly by financial outlets like Bloomberg, Marketplace, CNBC, etc.

This has been especially the case in recent years as the White House has tried to dampen public and media interest in anything having to do with the budget, fiscal policy, and federal finances. By not talking about it, the administration has tried to convince everyone that it's not an issue.