经济学人下载:美国债务真丢人

The House of Representatives, under Republican control as a result of last November’s mid-term elections, has balked at passing the necessary bill. That is perfectly reasonable: until recently the Republicans had been exercising their clear electoral mandate to hold the government of Barack Obama to account, insisting that they will not permit a higher debt ceiling until agreement is reached on wrenching cuts to public spending. Until they started to play hardball in this way, Mr Obama had been deplorably insouciant about the medium-term picture, repeatedly failing in his budgets and his state-of-the-union speeches to offer any path to a sustainable deficit. Under heavy Republican pressure, he has been forced to rethink.

由于去年十一月的中期选举而受控于共和党的众议院已经无法通过必要的议案。那是完全合理的：直至近期，共和党人一直在利用他们明确的选举授权将责任推给奥巴马政府，坚持认为在达成一项扭转削减公共支出的协议前，他们将不会批准更高的债务限额。在他们以这种方式表明强硬态度之前，奥巴马一直对中期选举漠不关心，他的预算及国情咨文演说屡屡失败，未能提出任何方案使赤字达到可持续水平，着实令人遗憾。在共和党重压之下，他被迫重新考虑自己的做法。

Now, however, the Republicans are pushing things too far. Talks with the administration ground to a halt last month, despite an offer from the Democrats to cut at least $2 trillion and possibly much more out of the budget over the next ten years. Assuming that the recovery continues, that would be enough to get the deficit back to a prudent level. As The Economist went to press, Mr Obama seemed set to restart the talks.

然而，现在共和党人做的太过分了。上月共和党人终止了与奥巴马及其内阁的对话，尽管民主党人承诺在未来10年削减至少2万亿美元甚至更多的预算。倘若经济持续恢复，那将足够能使赤字达到审慎水平。就在本期经济学人下载出版时，奥巴马似乎要动真格了，他要重启对话。

The sticking-point is not on the spending side. It is because the vast majority of Republicans, driven on by the wilder-eyed members of their party and the cacophony of conservative media, are clinging to the position that not a single cent of deficit reduction must come from a higher tax take. This is economically illiterate and disgracefully cynical.

症结点不在于开支。因为受其党内激进分子及立场保守媒体发出的不和谐之音驱使，绝大多数共和党人立场坚定，不会通过提高征税来削减赤字。这是对经济的无知和无耻的愤世嫉俗。