The discrepancy between taxing and spending -- The politics of taxing -- Raising taxes -- Cutting taxes -- The politics of spending -- The growth of government spending -- Reducing spending -- Deficits and the american democracy

The author chronicles the rise of what he calls the New New Left, beginning with President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty in the 1960s, and lays the blame for the economic meltdown of the early twenty-first century to the bigger government and more public spending agenda of the political powerhouse