[Hendrix]

And the Democrats would fix this problem by spending even more and taxing even more.

[ziggygrey]

As I said before, if we can't balance the budget with a Repub WH and a Repub Congress, is there any hope of it ever getting balanced?

[Once-Ler]

Mr. Allen's record is no better than Mr. Frist's. Mr. McCain made a stand by voting against the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003 and Mr. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. But, he supports extending tax cuts for investors, even though they are not paid for.

Bush's fault again? No. Dubya proposed spending caps. The Congress ignored them, and taxcuts don't need to be paid for. It my damn money. Frist, Allen and McCain need to cut spending.

[georgia2006]

""he supports extending tax cuts for investors, even though they are not paid for""


cutting the capital gains tax increases tax revenues because when taxes on capital go down, the rate of retun to capital goes up...those who favor high capital gains taxes forget that without capital gains there is nothing to tax....raising the tax on capital gains reduces the rate of return to an asset, thus lowering its price....if you were to sell that asset, you wouldnt pay a penny in tax, in fact youd exerience a loss that you could use to reduce your overall tax liability...and if tax rates were high, that would be quite a bit of revenue you could deprive the govt of

[CBart95]

There are "Lies".

There are "Damned Lies".

Then there's The NYT.

[Luis Gonzalez]

History

...of the deficit

The United States has been running a significant peacetime deficit since the late 1970's. The chronic peacetime deficits of the 1980's and the 1990's has led to the view that democratic governments are in some sense wrongly predisposed to running large and persistent deficits, and that this tendency need to be corrected by rule of law.

Looking at the historical behavior of federal government deficits is useful in assessing this view. The figure below shows that for most of the US history the federal government tends to run up the debt during wartime and then stabilize it during times of peace.