TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Keith Hennessey argues we should judge debt reduction plans by their resulting deficit, not the amount their creators think they reduce the deficit by:

It is far better to evaluate a deal by looking only at Y, the deficits that would result from the deal, rather than at X-Y, the change in those deficits from an arbitrarily defined starting point. In the first example, instead of asking “Is $2 or $7 trillion of deficit reduction the right amount,” we should ask “Is a policy resulting in $5 trillion of deficits over the next decade an acceptable outcome, or do we need to do more?”