Know When to Hold 'Em

Sometimes it's necessary that government overspends. For instance, during a recession when revenues are lower and when certain government services must be kept and probably expanded, it's necessary for government to run deficits to ensure its people are not left to rot (unemployment benefits, even food stamps...).

There are other times too. When government wants to invest in infrastructure and utilities that will make its citizens lives better. This type of deficit spending, unlike the former, doesn't have to only take place during a recession. It can happen any time a government wants to increase production, lower unemployment and provide greater services (interstate highway system).  Or it can happen any time government sees a greater need to the contribution of society.

We've done both in this country.  We've spent more than we had because of hard economic times.  We've spent more than we had because the investment into the future was way more important than printable money.  What we want to avoid, however, is running chronic deficits when we are neither in financial peril or investing in our future.  Unfortunately we did such a thing in this country for almost 8 years.  We ran huge, chronic deficits during decent growth years-- a time when we should be using the growth to shore up our finances-- with no investments into the future, and then hit a brick wall with the most severe financial crisis in 80 years.  This is not to say things would be over by now if we had managed the country's finances better during the aughts.  No not at all. It's simply to say the fiscal conservatives that governed us almost exclusively during that time committed the biggest and most non-fiscally sound economic policy this country has probably ever ventured into.  Oh and waged two completely unfunded wars in the middle of it.  There's no reason those very same people should ever be taken seriously ever again.

Republicans complaining their mess isn't fixed yet are the ones who set us on the course of decades of deficits and debt, and during that time never made one single complaint.  In fact, they bragged about how much deficits don't matter.  And for all their hype now, their very own economic alternative is crap.