National

Read every word of Bruce Bartlett's explanation. Bartlett goes into great detail on how "cutting spending" is a pipe dream -- either because the kind of stuff that conservatives always tell you they want to get gone won't do much to balance the budget or because there are not enough votes to get rid of it. He starts with showing how much control the President and Congress respectively have over spending and ends with busting the myths about how Reagan or Thatcher cut spending.