The next time you hear someone, like our bird-brain President George W Bush, talk about "reducing the deficit", hopefully you will realize that you are listening to a demagogic lie.
Let me explain why "reducing the deficit", which sounds like a good thing, is really a demagogic lie.
I am going to use an analogy. Let's say you are the head of a family of four, and you have one Credit Card. Your total credit card debt is, say, $10,000. At the Federal government's level, your total Credit Card debt would be called the National Debt. If you do not use your credit card at all this month, your debt will still increase, because of interest charges. If you buy nothing new this month, and you don't pay anything to your credit card company, your total debt will increase to $10,150. In a year of no purchases and no payments, your debt will increase from $10,000 to about $11,956, and in four years of no new purchases and no payments it will double, to $20,000. So, even though you are not making new purchases, you are nevertheless going deeper in the hole. If this month you do use the card for new purchases and you pay for these new purchases, you will still watch your total debt grow to $11,956 in one year. If, worst case, you do use the card for new purchases and you pay the credit card company less than what you spend, you will go deeper into the hole more quickly.
Let's imagine: you begin with a $10,000 total credit card debt. This month, January, you use it to buy $2,000 worth of stuff and you pay $1,000 toward your debt. This is really bad as your new debt is $11,165 ($10,000 old debt + $150 interest charges + $2000 new purchases - $1000 worth of payments + $15 interest charges on additional debt). Next month, February, you buy another $2000 worth of stuff but this time you up your payment to $1200. Now your total indebtedness is $12,144.50 ($11,165 old debt + $167.50 interest charges + $2000 new purchases - $1200 worth of payments + $12 interest charges on additional debt). As you can see, you are now far deeper in the hole (you now owe $12,144.50) than you were last month ($11,165), but at least the interest in your additional debt has improved, from $15 to $12. Wow!!! That is deficit reduction.
Deficit reduction is like a smoker cutting back from four packs / day to 3 1/2 packs a day. It may seem like an improvement, but he is still killing himself, just a tiny bit slower.
The only good thing to do with a debt is to reduce your total indebtedness. Reducing the deficit will still lead you to bankruptcy, just instead of its taking 24 months to get there, you'll have 25 months. This is called "kidding yourself."
Reducing the debt is a totally good thing, as it trends toward the debt's elimination. A reduction in the debt is called a SURPLUS. Surpluses, reductions in the total debt, cause a reduction in the monthly interest carrying charges. Clinton did it. If you want a debt off your back, you have to have surpluses, not deficit reductions! When Bush boasts of deficit reduction, it is like a drunk boasting of only five benders this month, down from six. It's like being in the middle of a deep-freeze: some days are 50 degrees below, some are ONLY 40 degrees below, and boasting about it. The only good thing to do about a deep-freeze is to pack up and leave. Deficit reduction sounds good, but you are still headed to disaster.
*************
But before I finish, hear this: the American National Debt, as of 12/23/2006, is some $8.635 trillion (from http://www.toptips.com/debtclock.html). "Your (average) family's share is $137,523." What exactly does this mean? It means that, in addition to any credit card debt you might owe, in addition to the mortgage debt on your home, you also owe an additional $135,000, and you pay about $8,000 in Federal taxes just to keep up with the interest on that additional debt. But, of course, in order to pay for the Bush tax cut, you did NOT pay $8,000 to keep the debt stable; you paid less, so the debt increased even without any new spending, because the U.S. taxpayer isn't even keeping up with his interest payments. So, what do you get for this extra $135,000 of indebtedness? Nothing, not a damned thing, "just another day older and deeper in debt." And if you don't pay it off, your kids will have to. As it is, the interest payments on the debt are by far the biggest expense in the entire Federal Tax Budget. Sorry. But you let it happen, because you believed the President when he said: the people know how to spend their money better than the Federal government, and when he crowed about his magnificent achievement, "Reducing the Deficit." And if you don't feel this personally, you are not getting what I'm trying to explain, which would be my fault; but re-read this paragraph until you do get it, it's about your indebtedness.
If you're in doubt about those Fiscal Conservative Presidents' (Reagan & Bush II) part in this drama, see http://zfacts.com/p/318.html.