SNIP
>>> Reagan did more for the domestic economy that anyone since Roosevelt.
>>
>>You're unfamilar with the US debt. Look at this graph, it just skyrocketed after Reagan took office.
>>http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/inflation.gif
>
>Not unfamiliar with it at all. It started to primarily rise in the mid eighties. It took dramatic upturns under republicans, and slipped down under democrats. It's also, not always a bad thing. We will never go bankrupt, and it's only at the federal level directly. State and local governments are largely unaffected. Unemployment is generally lower and companies are more willing to hire and expand. There's much more in the make-up of the economy that what the ticking clock of the national debt is. I think it's around $10,000 per second now.
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SNIP
Renoir,
Our experience (Canada) with deficits "only at the federal level" shows your assumption that "State and local governments are largely unaffected" is incorrect.
When our federal government decided to remedy the deficit the result was HUGE cuts in federal participation in long-established programs all over the place. Education funding and housing funding went to $0.00, leaving provincial governments to pick up the slack. In addition it drastically cut funding lots of important federal agencies, instead forcing them to become "fee-based" and also cutting staff to levels where their mandate couldn't be properly fulfilled. And the "fee based" approach gave the fee payers real CLOUT in areas where they should have remained unaffecting (when you're paying for a 'service' you believe you have rights to press for changes in those services). I'm talking here of things like meat inspections and drug reviews and safety standards and environmental inspections and...

Deficits affect all aspects of life, no matter who creates the deficit. But I'd say that a federal deficit is the deadliest of all. All the extra money spent on paying the interest is money that could have gone towards USEFUL programs or even to tax cuts.

cheers