Budget consitutional

Care for budget fiber with your coffee? Here's Dan Malloy's write-thru on Pat Toomey's budget-carving proposal and the senator himself does an explainer in the friendly pages of the National Review. Here's the top:

As I traveled across Pennsylvania last year, I promised Pennsylvanians that I would dedicate myself to two key priorities in the United States Senate: restoring economic growth and private-sector job creation, and putting our federal government on a sustainable fiscal path.

These two goals are inextricably connected. We cannot maximize economic growth without getting our government’s finances in order. And we can’t get our finances in order if we don’t have the courage to make serious and tough choices right now.

Today, we are barreling toward a fiscal crisis like a downhill freight train. A few weeks ago, Standard & Poor’s essentially threatened to downgrade the United States’ AAA credit rating unless policymakers reduce our budget deficits. This announcement stunned the political and financial world, but after years of reckless spending it should not have come as a surprise.