Cut and Tax

A recipe to close the deficit

Trying to close the federal budget deficit of nearly $200 billion is a bit like making the perfect spaghetti sauce. There are hundreds of different recipes because individual cooks have their own special tastes. Congressional Democrats want to trim the deficit primarily by reducing military spending and raising taxes, while the White House and many Republicans would prefer to cut social programs.

Now the Brookings Institution, a respected Washington research organization, has put forward a bold budget-cutting recipe that will be tasty to no one but may show the way toward a compromise. Published last week, Economic...