After 25 years of covering the federal budget, I'm still amazed at the persistence of fiscal misconceptions. The distinction between fact and political opinion has been blurred to the point of invisibility. The choices—what spending to cut, whose taxes to raise—are fundamentally political; the facts are not. But the budget is now so sprawling—the U.S. government spent $400 million an hour last year—that grasping it in its entirety is impossible....

After the California city of Stockton declared bankruptcy last month, politicians and credit raters assured investors that municipal bonds were still safe and that the city's insolvency presented no systemic risk. Does that script sound familiar? In reality, expensive labor agreements are threatening municipalities across the U.S., though the people who should be most concerned are taxpayers.

On Tuesday the city council of San Bernardino, a city of about 210,000...