Celebrating deficits of slightly below $1 trillion after four years of $1 trillion+ deficits? Really?
I know European denialism says otherwise, but perpetual deficit spending of 5% of GDP when public debt is about 100% of GDP = Eventual default.
These deficits are not perpetual, though. They're only during times of economic distress. If we planned on running a deficit for the next 100 years solid, then yeah, we'd probably be heading toward a default.
WHAT? We've been running a deficit virtually ever single year over the past half century! Our debt is over 100% of GDP now. Your attitude was fine in 1970-something, but we are way past that point.
It's a myth that deficits are eliminated during booms. That is what should happen, but it does not happen because politicians have an incentive to ALWAYS deficit-spend regardless of the shape of the economy. We need some sort of mechanism to ensure deficits only exist during downturns and quickly evaporate during subsequent recoveries. Of course, that is much easier said than done. Bringing back the line-item veto as a Constitutional Amendment comes immediately to mind. Another key is voters forcing politicians from both parties to adhere to fiscal responsibility like they did in the late 1990s. Celebrating near-trillion dollar deficits because we were previously running above-trillion dollar deficits brings to mind the delusional rhetoric of the Politburo in the late 1980s.
