I don’t claim to have the expertise to cut through all of the yelling about the deficit. I do have some instincts, though, and many of those instincts were reinforced in a recent article by Arianna Huffington:

What’s more, these extended, deadline-pushing theatrics are utterly unnecessary. There was no reason an agreement on the long-term deficit had to be coupled to raising the debt ceiling. The latter dates from the days of World War I, and has been raised, routinely, dozens and dozens of times. It was raised 18 times under Reagan. It was raised seven times under George W. Bush.