[sailaway21]

Any way you cut the cake, spending is basically a congressional prerogative. The president himself does not actually have a budget; he has a wish list that is only as strong as his electoral mandate. The president does hold veto power but he can hardly veto everything, although GW Bush might have considered trying it a bit more in my opinion.

The only policy that has shown any ability to shrink the deficit from year to year is congressional restraint in the area of spending. couple congressional restraint with a growing economy and you have deficit reduction. The latter is, of course, just as essential as the former. We grow our way out of deficits and we've always done so.

All of this is quite interesting and it really should be tied in with the coming election to have any relevance. Which canidate espouses spending restraint? Which canidate has a plethora of new programs he or she will want to fund? And, btw, does anyone really think that defense spending, which you can reference a few charts back, is really adequate given the current international situation? We're currently fighting two wars, with what I'd call a better than even chance that another one awaits us, at historically low defense spending taken as a percentage of GDP. If you don't fund defense there's a good chance that some of us aren't going to get the opportunity to worry about health care.