White House Economics as usual

This guy seems to explain Bush's "economic" theory on the deficit pretty well. Politicians claiming responsibility for economic upturns when their policies had very little if any effect on the outcome and politicians trying to something look better than it actually is (our deficit is smaller than we thought it was going to be!). If out economy is booming as Bush says it is, why is it that he isn't able to keep our spending under control? Clinton could. Yes, Clinton didn't have the war on terror, but Clinton also didn't create the biggest addition to government since FDR. Clinton had the benefit of an economic boom, but doesn't Bush?

Running a deficit gives support to the idea that we need to cut social programs. Reagan was famous for it: we need to spend money on defense to protect us from the evil Soviet Union! Oh, because we are spending so much on that we are running a deficit. Well, we can't cut defense spending; we have to cut social programs!

I don't know...those terrorists are too much of a threat...we certainly can't cut defense spending...

Limiting defense spending does not necessarily mean limiting defense. There is a lot of waste in our government spending and a lot of services that could be offered at lower costs. Some examples: Competitive bidding for certain government contracts, stop subsidizing industries making enormous profits, and don't let companies offering to house hurricane victims charge the government more per room/cabin than they charge a regular guest.

This is a good link to some additional discussion of the deficit and spending and a discussion of the piece I linked above.