Originally Posted by kane

It is a little more complex than that. What you say in general is true, but here is the problem. When times are good and the economy is chugging along our government officials (both democrat and republican run) spend more money and grow the size of the government. We spend every penny that comes in and then some. Then when things go bad and the economy shrinks the amount of money that comes in is less, but now we have more obligations and thus more debt.

What we should be doing is spending less when we have more and living under our means so that when times are hard and less is coming in we can still meet those obligations. But that, sadly, is not how it works. Every politician gets elected promising that they will bring something home from Washington for the people that voted for them. That is really all they care about. So damn the consequences they are going to get theirs no matter what. To get what they want they make deals and they don't care about the overall well being of the nation so long as they can keep their promises to their voters and keep their jobs.