Replying to a message of Dave Drum to Jeff Binkley:

 DD> -=> Jeff Binkley wrote to Dave Drum <=-

 DD>> Who was the last president to balance the budget? Wasn't a member of
 DD>> the elephant party.

 JB>> If you are referring to The Clinton, it was Congress, led by John
 JB>> Kasich, who drove down spending.  However, even though the budget
 JB>> was balanced, the debt went up.  So while we may call that an
 JB>> improvement, over the long run it is a accounting gimmic.

 DD> America's entire economy has been an accounting gimmick since we went
 DD> off the gold standard.

Perhaps.  I'm more inclined to think that it dates from the time congress 
discovered it could spend money without receiving it first.  When John
Maynard Keynes (the inventor of deficit spending) was told that in the long
run his concept cannot work he replied "In the long run we're all dead."
His concpet has been in use in this country since Roosevelt minor's administration,
very nearly eighty years now, and that counts as a 'long run' in my book - and
obviously it doesn't work.

One big culprit is off-budget spending.  The congress passes a budget that
(theoretically) balances revenues and expenditures - and then passes dozens
if not hundreds of 'supplemental spending' bills that aren't on budget.  IMO 
the people of the states whose senators vote for such bills should be responsible
for half of the money to fund them, and the other half should be the responsibility
of the people of the congressional districts whose representatives voted for it.
Sort of an automatic 'supplemental revenue' bill to offset the 'supplemental
spending.'

--- FleetStreet 1.19+