specialists, many written in maddeningly arcane jargon, simply overload legislators. Moreover, such analyses often reveal just how complicated a problem really is. And analysts' prescriptions are always subject to error. It all adds up to frustration for the recipients. Too often, Rivlin says, they either succumb to paralysis or, going to the opposite extreme, plump for unrealistically simple solutions.
In her view, that is how Congress and the White House got the nation into today's budgetary...