What I desire to point out is that I wish the law was not so, but that being the law, I must follow it.

If you think about it, candidate Obama, Sen. Obama, was running on sort of long-run economic issues, like restoring prosperity to the middle class, dealing with the perennial problem of health care in the United States. He talked a lot about the budget deficit, about the need to transition to clean energy.

Honest talk about the deficit is risky. Voters are more enthusiastic about the abstract notion of deficit reduction than about the painful details of accomplishing it.

There's a joke in economics about the drunk who loses his keys in the street but only looks for them under the lightposts. When asked why, he says, 'because that's where the light is.' That's the problem with the deficit.

Most arguments for instituting or raising a minimum wage are based on fairness and redistribution. Even if workers are getting a competitive wage, many of us are deeply disturbed that some hard-working families still have very little.

Cold-turkey deficit reduction would cause a significant recession. A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that going headlong over the cliff would cause our gross domestic product, which has been growing at an annual rate of around 2 percent, to fall at a rate of 2.9 percent in the first half of 2013.

If increasing income equality is the goal, it might be wiser to put money into infrastructure than to subsidize manufacturing. Construction also pays good wages, but with lower educational requirements. And America's infrastructure needs are enormous.