The Bipartisan March to Madness, by David Stockman

 This is an excellent examination of the fix we are in and how we got there, by David Stockman, a former
Republican representative from Michigan, was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985.  Truth be told, we are on borrowed time, and should have addressed this march toward the cliff a long time ago.

"Washington’s feckless drift into class war is based on the illusion that we have endless time to put our fiscal house in order. This has instilled a terrible budgetary habit whereby politicians continuously duck concrete but politically painful near-term savings in favor of gimmicks like freezes, caps and block grants that push purely paper cuts into the distant, foggy future. Mr. Ryan’s plan gets to a balanced budget in the fiscal afterlife (i.e., the 2030s); the White House’s tactic of accumulating small-fry deficit cuts over the enormous span of 12 years amounts to the same dodge."

The Bipartisan March to Madness