President Bush bragged the other night in his address to Congress that the deficit had been cut in half three years early. He predicted it would be balanced by 2012.

Now we learn the details.

A story in the NYT this morning explains that the deficit disappears in the next decade if and only if all of the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire as planned and only if the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) isn't reduced.

In other words, if the country returns back to the tax levels of the Clinton years the budget will once again be in balance.

Do we need more evidence that the Bush tax cuts were wrongheaded?

The AMT needs to be addressed. If nothing's done the tax will take a huge bite out of the paychecks of middle class families. Fixing the AMT will cost the government 1.2 trillion over a decade. That alone would keep the government in deficit territory.

Because tax policy is complicated the American people do not understand the flim flam of the Bush administration. All they care about is that their taxes went down under Bush.

This is one of the downsides of mass democracy. When unscrupulous pols like Bush take advantage of people's ignorance bad policies result.