If you believe in Keynesian economics (many people still do), that's exactly what they should be doing. To quote wikipedia: "Keynes′ theory suggested that acti

If you believe in Keynesian economics (many people still do), that's exactly what they should be doing. To quote wikipedia: "Keynes′ theory suggested that active government policy could be effective in managing the economy. Rather than seeing unbalanced government budgets as wrong, Keynes advocated what has been called countercyclical fiscal policies, that is policies which acted against the tide of the business cycle: deficit spending when a nation's economy suffers from recession or when recovery is long-delayed and unemployment is persistently high—and the suppression of inflation in boom times by either increasing taxes or cutting back on government outlays." You can make an argument about whether that's a valid theory or not, but saying spending more than you're taking is just plain bad, isn't really much of an argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics#Active_fiscal_policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics#Active_fisc...