John Danforth: “I take the opposite view. The fact is that we have not done a good job of balancing the budget. We never do it. It used…”

“I take the opposite view. The fact is that we have not done a good job of balancing the budget. We never do it. It used to be thought that countercyclical spending was the way to operate an economy--that at the down times in the economy, we would run deficits; and in prosperous times, we would run a surplus; that over a period of time, it would balance out. We do not do that. We do not even begin to. In good times and bad times, the times of recession and times of great prosperity, we go on year after year after year and never running a surplus, always running a deficit, and the result of this is that in a very short period of time, 20 years, the national debt has gone from under a $1/2 to $4rac{1}{2} trillion. We are not capable of dealing with the budget deficit under the present structure in which we are working.”