I had a bad dream last night for the first time that I can remember in as long as I can remember. The bad dream was specific and real-life. I was about to start the second semester of my third year of law school when our class was called into the dean's office and told that because of budget deficits each of us students had to come up with $20,000 to graduate. Shocked and angry, I immediately told the dean that I was dropping out of law school. The next day I reversed course and went to her office and told her I would pay up.

I know what brought this dream about. The last thing that I read in the news before going to bed was this statement by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on 60 minutes:

The U.S. federal government's on an unsustainable fiscal path. And that just means that the debt is growing faster than the economy. So, it is unsustainable. I don't think that's at all controversial.

Controversial or not, it was shocking to me. Our debt grew $1 trillion dollars in January. From $33 trillion in October to $34 trillion, the first time we had ever been at $34T.

Each of us has a thousand decisions that we have to make every day. Most of them are trivial. I have always divided the non-trivial questions into the difficult and the hard. The way that I think a difficult decision is one where the right decision I must make is clear and easy to understand, but is nonetheless difficult for me because it causes me or people I care about some level of pain. A hard decision to me is one where the the right decision is not clear and I have to study the question to divine the right answer. A hard decision is not painful. Each kind of decision has to be made. The difficult decisions I make with alacrity. The hard decisions I make the moment I see the issue clearly. I'm a pragmatic man.

President Biden is a pragmatic man. Chairman Powell articulated the definition of what unsustainable means in fiscal practice. The definition is easy to understand. The president understands it; I understand it. Therefore, this is not a hard decision that the president has to make. He must get the increase in the deficit below the economic growth rate. Maybe it is difficult, in my meaning, for him, I don't know. But he must do it.