- 2000, a year of economic plenty, surpluses and anticipated future surpluses, was not the time to cut government spending.

- 2011, with three trillion-plus deficits in a row (so far), and a budget $1.3 trillion larger than in 2000, is not the time to cut government spending, either.

- If you borrow and print money and hand it out to people, it will help the deficit because all those people and the people they pay will put 20 percent of that stimulus money back into the Treasury. Math is hard.

- If we put another $48 billion a year in taxes on the rich, everything will work.

- Cutting government spending is not the answer, despite that fact that this is what is being done to fix things all over Europe and in many state governments. ("Every economist" is obviously a slight exaggeration.)

This is approaching dementia. One more year...

The "New Deal" had us at over 20 percent unemployment for ten solid years. I doubt this result would be considered a success in our modern day. We have indeed been over this before and I wish the records were still available.

WWII took us to government deficits as high as 30 percent of GDP, which would be $4.2 trillion now. But by 1947 they were all paid back, and we should find out more about how that worked.