The TUC's new slogan 'a future that works' sets a profound challenge. Austerity and rapid deficit reduction is failing in its own terms but even at its best it is short-sighted muddle-through politics with no vision of a new economic model.

What we're discussing privately and publicly is a budget which is a blueprint for the future which creates jobs which educates our children which provides healthcare for all Americans which takes our deficit down which gives a tax cut for 95% of the American people.

Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation's competitive needs.

Deficits mean future tax increases pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.

Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past present and future wars.

Europe is difficult to coordinate and our main deficit may not even lie in this area of finance and economics but in foreign and security policy. We have a leadership problem because we are still 27 different members who have still not decided on how to work with each other based on what we used to call a European constitution.

But because we in the United States finance our current account deficit by borrowing in our own currency we can move to a more competitive dollar without the adverse effects that followed currency declines in other countries.

To finance this trade deficit the U.S. has to borrow from the rest of the world or sell American assets like stocks businesses and real estate to the rest of the world.

The only way that we can reduce our financial dependence on the inflow of funds from the rest of the world is to reduce our trade deficit.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you're flying high at first but it won't take long before you feel the impact.

Maybe that first gigantic deficit the Reaganites piled up was an accident just a combination of deluded 'supply side' tax cuts and a huge bag of good stuff for the Pentagon. But pretty quickly conservatives discovered that deficits when done correctly did something really cool: deficits defunded the Left.

Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.