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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Troodon, post: 445123, member: 4626&quot;]Interesting theory... I&#039;ve heard candidates promise this before.&nbsp; Congress really has more power to do anything about it than the president does.&nbsp; All the president can do is submit a budget and hope Congress approves it... or try to veto a budget bill he doesn&#039;t like and hope Congress doesn&#039;t have to votes to override it.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Um yeah, and it was Andrew Jackson!</p><p><br /></p><p>Well that really did that.&nbsp; Some give Clinton credit for doing the same thing, and he deserves some... but the main reason he ran the budget at a surplus has to do with the dot com boom greatly increasing the incoming revenue.&nbsp; He cut spending on some things, increased it on others... but when the dot com bubble burst and we were still spending at the same level suddenly we were in a deficit again.</p><p><br /></p><p>Without straying too much into the political realm... let me just make the rather uncontroversial assertion that despite what the two major parties promise in campaigns, it&#039;s not really been a major priority for members of either party to reduce spending.&nbsp; The obvious solution if you&#039;re running at a deficit is to either reduce spending, increase inflows, or both.&nbsp; Neither party disputes this.&nbsp; Where the political controversy errupts is when you argue what you cut spending on, and/or what you do to increase revenue... then politicians become more concerned about protecting their own turf than in balancing the budget.</p><p><br /></p><p>No congressman wants to raise taxes or lower how many goodies he gets his continuents from the federal piñata... that costs votes.&nbsp; Promising to balance the budget is a crowd pleaser, but doing what it takes is not, so the smart political strategy would be to promise to try to balance the budget, but not actually do much along those lines.&nbsp; Hence the debt that never really goes away.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for inflation... well it&#039;s not that high anyway, domestically.&nbsp; If it&#039;s weak against other currencies... well unless you buy a lot of foreign goods it&#039;s probably not going to mean much to you.&nbsp; On the upside, a weaker dollar (based on foreign exchange rates, not domestic inflation) means it&#039;s easier to export goods and encourages foreign tourism![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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