Lexington | Fun on a budget

摘要

At the end of Barack Obama's budget, which was published on February 2nd, the administration thanks 614 people by name for putting the thing together. It adds that "hundreds, perhaps thousands" of nameless others also helped. There is something depressing about the effort that went into producing the document. The budget is an admirable piece of work which contains many good ideas, from cuts in farm subsidies to an increase in tax credits for childless workers. There is, however, a grammatical mistake repeated throughout it. "The budget will", the president writes, when what he means is that his budget would, in the unlikely event that Congress were ever to pass it.