Chart of the Week: Deficit Hysteria

US Person used to give Obamacon credit for being a clever politician.  But since taking office he has fallen into a hole the opposition dug for him.  He fell in by giving their deficit mongering "street cred".  He established a high profile commission to address a problem wildly exaggerated by so-called conservatives who helped create the deficit in the first place. They have used the deficit meme as a justification to oppose all,not just some social legislation proposed by the Democrats. This chart from the Congressional Budget Office tells the story:

You can see that the economic stimulus [light blue] rapidly becomes a small part of current deficit projections. That wide band of gold in the middle is the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and it gets bigger into the future. The other largest contributing factor is the decline in tax revenue due to economic depression [dark blue]. Clearly, a rational person without an ideological ax to grind would conclude from this the way forward is to revive economic activity by putting people back to work and paying taxes, ending the wars as soon as possible, and eliminating the tax holiday for the wealthy.  But the problem is Washington is full of people with axes to grind.