Even though my job as Policy Director means I spend a fair amount of time sitting at my desk and staring at my computer, I also get to play "in the field" giving chart talks or running budget exercises. Earlier this month, I conducted a "Principles and Priorities" exercise at American University, and had a a wonderful "teaching moment" where I was able to link the hypothetical budget simulation to perhaps the primary fiscal policy debate that will surround President-Elect Obama as his administration sets their priorities.

In the exercise, students divide into groups and act like special congressional committees designated with making budget choices. They pick choices in four areas: domestic discretionary spending, defense and national security spending, taxes and revenues, and entitlements. Groups can either cut programs or increase taxes to reduce the deficit, or spend more on programs they consider important, or cut taxes to increase the deficit. At the beginning of the exercise they are supposed to develop a target goal for the deficit and by the end they add up their choices to see how they did. Because we are an organization that stresses fiscal responsibility, the students tend to think the more they can do to lower the...

There is a good article in the New York Times today, as part of their "If Elected..." series, that tries valiantly to add up the candidates' taxing and spending promises with an emphasis on their deficit implications. As a budget policy analyst, I know how tough such a task is during an election campaign, and empathize with any reporter who attempts to do so.

What I try to keep remembering to tell members of the media as I go through the numbers with them, is that the numbers are certain to change, and the candidates and their advisors know that, but what really matters is the commitment to fiscal responsibility once in office and what flexibility they have left themselves with, after the campaign ends, to alter their plans. 

Sometimes plans change because campaigns are two-year long processes, and the plans a candidate designed at the beginning, might no longer be what can be written into legislation and enacted once the campaign ends. I think that has clearly happened in the last couple months with the crisis in the financial markets.

Unfortunately, more often than...