the editors at crown union random house to publish the book i did on the fed said to me, the fed was boring and you made it interesting. the budget is boring. can you make it interesting? i said making the fed exciting in 2081 were about to tell into the great depression wasn't all that hard but there's nothing going on with the budget. a book length treatment of the supercommittee is not something i would read, let alone want to write. so then they said well, what if he did a year and the life of the budget? you could start with the budget being crafted behind the scenes and then the president present the budget and in congress actually acts on the budget and in the money goes out the door. and i said that's not really the way it works. they said really? so i began to think, maybe i did know something that could be useful. and i brought with me to this conversation some of the charts keep a distance foundation of done on the budget. pete peterson is a guy who devoted $1 billion to do with the federal budget. i'm not sure to make much progress on the policy front but he is made lots