The poll on Meet the Press this morning said it all: 74% of Americans want a balanced budget, but they don't want cuts to their programs.
That pretty much explains why we're in this mess -- Americans want what they want but they don't want to pay for it. That's why Americans bought houses they couldn't afford. That's why they used their homes like an ATM machine. That's why they got into debt up to their eyeballs.
That's why Americans think you can have a balanced budget without reforms to Social Security and Medicare -- which account for a huge chunk of the budget.
Tom Brokaw is dead-on on how we got here. "The whole country was in on this." Americans have yet to accept their fair share of the blame. They're still shaking their fists at Wall Street and blaming everyone else.
Oh, and Jim Cramer is troll. A sensationalistic troll. I thought everyone knew that. What's he doing on Meet the Press?
An update on the debt deal:
