Can You Fix the U.S. Budget? Test Yourself

If you haven't tried The New York Times's Budget Puzzle yet, give it a shot. It's a quick interactive exercise that lets you make all the hard decisions (or easy, politically unpopular decisions, as the case may be) to see if you can come up with a combination of cuts and taxes that balance the books.

Here's my solution. Fifty-seven percent of my savings came from tax increases (I returned the estate tax to Clinton-era levels and instituted a carbon tax, among other things) and 43 percent came from spending cuts (I cut military spending everywhere I could).

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Balancing the budget is easy when you don't have to worry about Congress or constituents.