BEN STEIN HAS A BOUT OF SANITY

I'm certainly no fan of Stein but he seems to have gone off the Free Market Fairy reservation:

Ben Stein: No more voodoo economics!
Says U.S. will not go broke but Americans must live within our means - and can, by raising taxes on the rich and cutting programs
April 17, 2011
Ben Stein

The Republicans - who started the problem with excessive tax cuts in the Bush years - will have to agree to raise taxes, at least upon the truly rich (of whom there are plenty). 

The Democrats will have to agree to major spending cuts. I hope these will not be at all in defense, but some probably will be. Social Security and Medicare will have to be changed ... a lot.

All in all, we Americans just promised ourselves more than we could deliver. We lived in a dream world.

No more Voodoo Economics.

The grown-ups like Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin, his Treasury Secretary (who actually balanced the budget) left the federal fiscal scene ten years ago.

UPDATE: Uncle Alan also has a change of heart...

Greenspan Steps Up Call to End Bush-Era Tax Cuts
By Luca Di Leo
April 17, 2011, 2:47 PM ET
Wall Street Journal

“This crisis is so imminent and so difficult that I think we have to allow the so-called Bush tax cuts all to expire. That is a very big number,” he said, referring to how much the U.S. government could save from letting income taxes go back up to levels last seen under former President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Greenspan was talking about re-imposing the taxes for all Americans. The Treasury has estimated that a permanent extension of all the Bush tax cuts would cost $3.6 trillion over the next decade.