David Brooks of the Short Memory

From the transcript of Friday's Shields/Brooks discussion on the Newshour, in regards to the SuperCommittee:

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I mean, I'm hearing the exact same thing. [failure]
I think the tragedy of it is, if it was ever going to work, it was going to work under these circumstances. The rules were rigged to make a deal as possible as -- as possible as possible, which is to say there was going to be a clean vote on the House. They were going to meet in private. They had this sword of Damocles hanging over them. And they still couldn't reach a deal.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And still didn't...
DAVID BROOKS: And still -- and so it's a history of really 10 or 15 years of potential moments where we could have -- somebody could have made a deal with doing some spending cuts, some tax increases, jam it all together in whatever form you want to do.[emphasis added] And every think tank has their own version.

Mr. Brooks appears to have forgotten the budget was balanced for FY 2001.