What it will take to get US back on budget

Make your own choices on how to restore our fiscal responsibility with this NY Times interactive page.  While I suspect this is a somewhat abstract and incomplete model, it’s a great starting point for injecting some reality into the Unavoidable National Conversation.

Tip from The Corner.
Update (14 November). Don’t want to budget?  We can keep trying quantitative easing:

Tip from the Instapundit.

Update (15 November).  You’d think budgeting would start at home.  However, in spite of a salary freeze, 74% of White House staffers got a 9% raise this year. “…plenty of people making more than $100,000 a year did get a raise as long as a title change came with it.”  That’s a classic bureaucrat gambit:  freeze salaries, then reclassify all your claquers into “new” jobs (at the same desks) with higher salaries.  It happens everywhere from local school districts to the the White House.