WASHINGTON -- There is no good reason for negotiations on the budget and the debt ceiling to be deadlocked, because the solution is obvious: First, do no harm.

The Hippocratic injunction should be something befuddled economists and warring politicians can agree on. With the nation struggling to recover from a devastating recession, unemployment stuck at crisis levels, financial markets spooked by the possibility of European defaults and consumers disinclined to consume, it makes no earthly sense to suck money out of the economy.

Democrats are right that this is a terrible moment for spending cuts. Republicans are right that this is an awful moment for tax increases. The only reasonable thing to do is kick the can down the road -- but in a purposeful, intelligent way.

As a practical matter, this means Republicans must swallow an increase in the debt ceiling and Democrats must accept painful spending curbs that kick in when the economy is off its sickbed. It means conservatives have to be patient in bringing expenditures down and progressives have to be patient in returning tax rates -- even for the wealthy -- to what many of us consider appropriate levels.

All this is clear -- even as much else about the economy and its prognosis becomes increasingly murky.

Indeed, it is reasonable to ask whether the "dismal science" of economics even works anymore as a reliable tool for analysis and prediction. While some economists remain staunch, unwavering disciples of John Maynard Keynes or Milton Friedman, others have begun couching their words. It's almost as if the laws governing the universe of money have changed.

Two years ago at a seminar, I heard a distinguished economic forecaster confidently explain how the recovery would proceed. While some usually reliable indicators were anomalous and contradictory, he said, the one thing he knew from the historical record was that sharp, deep recessions are followed by steep, roaring recoveries. By the second quarter of 2010, he said, growth would be as high as 4 percent and unemployment would be tumbling. Happy days would be here again.

I won't embarrass the man by naming him, since he wasn't much further off base than many of his peers. No economic orthodoxy has come through the past few years unscathed.

At least former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan -- once a firm, unquestioning believer in deregulation -- had the honesty to admit that the 2008 financial meltdown exposed a "flaw" in his ideology and left him "in a state of shocked disbelief." That's where the whole economics profession should be.