FordTruck5Speed: The national debt has nothing to do with rate cuts. It has to do primarily with spending. If you over-spend, the deficit, and consequently the debt goes up.

LeRoy: "The national debt has nothing to do with rate cuts". Let us ponder that extraordinary claim for a moment. Following this kind of 'logic', we should immediately cut all tax rates to zero, since no one really enjoys paying taxes. Taking your statement at face value, this would cause no change in the national debt. Now: Do you truly believe what you said, even for a millisecond?

Quoting from the textbook on Intermediate Macroeconomics by Abel and Bernanke (yes, that Bernanke), the level of government saving S(g) is given by:

S(g) = (T - TR - INT) - G

where T = total tax revenues, TR = transfer payments (Social Security payments, corporate welfare and the like), INT = interest on the national debt, and G = government purchases of goods and services. The three terms in parentheses constitute net government receipts. For America, S(g) has, of course, been strongly negative for the last six years, and generally negative for nearly all of the past 60 years. Reason: Because our tax revenues are not as great as the sum of transfer payments, government purchases, and interest on the national debt.

If you truly believe that tax revenues have nothing to do with tax rates, then I have reason to question your arithmetical skills. [Where did you say you went to school?]

And you can save us all your little lectures about the Laffer curve. We've heard them before.

FordTruck5Speed:

you look at Barack and Hillary, their solution is even worse.

LeRoy: Sorry, not according to the non-partisan analyses, which show that McCain's proposed programs would cause the deficit to grow by a much larger amount than either of the Obama or Clinton programs. Unfortunately, none of the three major candidates are taking this issue very seriously. Which means that America is in very deep trouble, indeed.