West Wing Debt Ceiling

Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, Dule Hill, and Kristin Chenoweth do a better job explaining the debt ceiling “crisis” in this one-minute clip from a sixth-season episode of “The West Wing” (circa 2004) than most professional newscasters have in all the hours devoted to the story over the last month. Ironically, the script was by Lawrence O’Donnell, who now anchors an hour of primetime on MSNBC…

And for those Americans who believe that President Obama is responsible for the burgeoning deficit, check this chart from Sunday’s New York Times, which shows that the Bush tax cuts alone cost more than all of Obama’s policies — and so did the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We could end those without touching any other federal spending and the “crisis” would be over.