Washington's misleading budget theater

It’s been a long and exhausting fight, but the debt ceiling clash will have a big payoff. After it’s finally resolved — with the Boehner plan or the Reid plan or something else — we will have confronted our budget crisis, made tough choices and forced the federal government to live within its means. That’s right. And I’m Katy Perry.

We have heard a lot lately about plans to slash spending by trillions of dollars. Though these sound like deep cuts, they are not even shallow cuts. Under the plans being discussed in Washington, federal spending would rise, and so would the federal debt — not by a little, but by a lot.