Volume 3, Issue 11. September 1, 2000. George Bush plans to cut taxes. But deficit reduction is the wrong criterion to use in the first place when judging the two plans not that it's unimportant, only that it's not the main issue.
Economic growth is the main issue, to which deficit reduction is only tangentially related.
Over the longer term, a large deficit may retard growth, but it's not the biggest drag on growth. That distinction goes to the nation's failure to invest its failure to invest adequately in factories and equipment and its failure to invest adequately in education, training, roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, and the other foundation stones of a modern economy. In accepting the Republican nomination for President, George Bush ridiculed the notion of public investment. There's an important distinction between spending and investing, and the distinction is the same both in the private and in the public sphere. When the government funds criminal justice, national defense, unemployment compensation, welfare, mental health services, or farm price supports, for example, it maintains the safety and economic security of citizens here and now.