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Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for the 5th of February. I'm John Dickerson

in Washington with David Plotz and Emily Bazelon. We are all here and we're very happy to be here.

We're going to talk today about the budget deficit and its growing size.

We're going to talk about the change of the don't out down-ass, don't-tale policy.

And then our third topic is going to be about a controversial ad opposing abortion that's going to run during the Super Bowl.

First, we're going to start with the budget deficit.

The president has proposed a $3.8 trillion budget for the year 2011. That begins in October 2010. The budget will have $100 billion in job stimulus, which tax cuts and infrastructure programs. And then it will have a three-year domestic spending freeze. Big, huge numbers. David, your reaction to this extraordinary budget.

Well, you left off the big thing, which is that it has a, the deficit is, the budget is much less

interesting than the deficit. And there's a $1.6 trillion deficit. The biggest ever. The biggest ever,

the biggest ever, I think as a portion of GDP since World War II, and with no,

with significant projections for significant gigantic deficits way out into the future for

10 years, as long as they project.

Now, now it's, first of all, we should note one, this is just the president's proposal, this

is not a congressional bill.

The Congress hasn't taken it up.

Nothing's been passed.

So what comes out of Congress could look very different.

Two, projections about what budget deficits will be are notoriously inaccurate over the long term.

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