Not much more, I promise. As Mark Thoma points out, the verdict among everyone who knows anything is that Stockman’s piece, mysteriously given star treatment, was pathetic and embarrassing. It’s full of big numbers that are scary because they’re big numbers — we’ve run a current account deficit of $8 trillion. So? We have a $16 trillion a year economy; America’s net international investment position is a debt of about 30 percent of GDP, which isn’t that big; our balance of investment income is still positive. But it’s EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS!

Anyway, I get especially annoyed when people portray all of US fiscal history since the 50s, or something, as a tale of bipartisan runaway spending. You should always have this picture in mind:

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We didn’t have anything you could call a deficit problem until 1980. We then saw rising debt under Reagan-Bush; falling debt under Clinton; rising under Bush II; and a sharp rise in the aftermath of the financial crisis. This is not a bipartisan problem of runaway deficits! Pre-1980, no problem at all; after 1980, deficits were very much a monopartisan issue until the financial crisis, which was a time when running deficits was appropriate. Anyone who says differently hasn’t done his homework.