Still Stuck in a Vicious Circle

The budget predicts less red ink but high unemployment

In a State of the Union speech a President can describe his program in appealing generalities, but in the budget he must translate vague words into hard numbers. Ronald Reagan's budget for fiscal 1984 suffers more than a little in that translation. It features a spending freeze that really is not a freeze, and a plan to reduce deficits that would still leave them distressingly high. Moreover, it bases all calculations on a set of predictions about unemployment, output and interest rates so gloomy as to make clear that if the economy is...