Quote:


Without a surplus, and without just printing a batch of bills specifically to fix today's problems alone (with the accompanying problems that follow that sort of clusterfuck), deficit spending is the only way to proceed.



Deficits aren't financed by printing stacks of dollar bills. It's done by selling bonds to the Chinese, Arabs, etc, and those bonds have a due-date and carry interest.

And in any case the budget plan doesn't include money to "fix today's problems". *That* will be over and above the budget plans. Also the budget makes revenue assumptions that the recession never happened.

All of which means that taxes coming in are likely to be a lot less than expected, expenditures a lot higher, and the deficit estimate much too low.

Quote:


On paper anyways, spending it on infrastructure and rebuilding seems sounder than Reagan's huge defense buildup.


That's not clear. FDR used military spending at the end of the 1930s to get the country out of the Depression. The Infrastructure projects earlier in the decade didn't do that trick.
_________________________
"If they can't picture me with a knife, forcing them to strip in an alley, I don't want any part of it. It's humiliating." - windsock