A one off, like TARP and the stimulus.
No a real one off. A lot of the stimulus money isn't one-off spending.
Also it was almost all one off, government spending fell off a cliff after the war. It was still much higher (in real per-capita terms) than the pre-new deal levels, but it was a fraction of WWII spending (until the Korean war, the cold war, and post-war non-military expansion of government spending). That simply isn't going to happen this time. Its very unlikely that the top line of spending will drop at all year to year any time soon. As for a drop like the one after WWII, its just not in the cards.
We were on the verge of a 2nd great depression.
No we where not.
Listen we used to argue the opposite sides of this when Bush was in the WH.... you said deficits didn't matter
No I didn't. I never said "deficits don't matter". I have said small deficits can be maintained indefinitely, I also early on in the Bush administration, say his deficits where not so horrible (which is not the same as "doesn't matter"), but the was with much smaller deficits. I cut the government of the time some slack for spending more after 9/11 and some other things (just like I would cut it some slack now for having fairly high deficits, but we are well beyond that point), but then spending kept going up, and up, and the government used up any slack it had in my mind on this issue. Also the fact that we had large (but smaller) deficits then means its more important to have some fiscal responsibility now. |
