Top U.S. CEOs urge increase in tax revenue: WSJ

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Let's be honest here. You guys aren't even treating this like money. It is just a game, where there are numbers, and those numbers needn't have any relation to reality or ability to pay.

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[Yossarian]

[OGPhilly]

[exploited]

[OGPhilly]

You started out by saying the government shouldn't spend more than they take in. Then it became that interest should be included when calculating the cost of a program on borrowed money (which I'm fine with). These are two different statements. I'm not against deficit spending when it's needed, which IMO is when the economy is bad (which is when all the politicians squawk about cutting the budget). It pisses me off that when the economy is good, there's a lot less concern over debt. That's realistically the only time we can really tackle the problem.

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[OGPhilly]

I already said I'm with you on being honest about the price tag. I don't know why you're so averse to any deficit spending though. In a bad economy, deficit spending is the only thing you really have. I draw your attention to FDR's attempts to balance the budget in 1937. The result was tumbling back into recession and losing much of the gains he made in his first 4 years. Just sticking to the principle of balanced budgets regardless of circumstance does not work.

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[OGPhilly]

Well obviously everyone supports a balanced budget in theory. Nobody wants deficit spending just for the sake of going into debt. What disturbs me is that the anti-deficit spending talk always becomes loudest when deficit spending is actually justified.