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The answer is quite simple, actually, as the two charts from the Congressional Budget Office clearly demonstrate -- just let the Bush-era tax cuts expire. Voila! Deficits disappear in less than four years. The top chart shows what happens when taxes go back to the levels in the Clinton-era '90's, when we had a healthy, growing economy:

TalkingPointsMemo has the story:

On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office released its updated long-term budget forecast, which looked surprisingly like the previous version of its long-term budget forecast.

It showed, as one might expect, that if the Bush tax-cuts remain in effect and Medicare and Medicaid spending isn't constrained in some way, the country will topple into a genuine fiscal crisis -- not the fake one the Congress is pretending the country's in right now.

Republicans, of course, seized on that particular projection, and claimed (a bit ridiculously) that it proved the government must adopt their precise policy views: major spending cuts, particularly to entitlement programs.

While all this -- from the findings to the politicization of them -- is perfectly expected, the forecast also presents another opportunity to remind people that the medium-term budget outlook is perfectly fine if Congress adheres to the law as it's currently written. That means no repealing the health care law, for one, but more significantly it means allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, and (unfathomably) allowing Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors to fall to the levels prescribed by the formula Congress wrote almost 15 years ago. In other words, no more "doc fixes."

The solution to fixing this mess is crystal clear. Unfortunately, our elected leaders on Capitol Hill have smoke in their eyes and seem incapable of doing what's right.

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