Why the escalation of the national debt continues to be viewed as a partisan issue is baffling to me. The system has been around since the country's birth and up until the 1930's had largely been used to fund war efforts. The desperate times of the depression gave rise to a new school of thought, Keynesian Economics, and through FDR's New Deal was given its chance to succeed.
The basic tenet of the philosophy was that times of economic hardship the capacity for the market to produce products had not changed, it was only the demand. Since, they reasoned, it followed economic hardships were caused when demand was operating below efficiency for any number of reasons, tight credit markets an example of one such factor. The private markets, they reasoned, could not recover from downturns on their own.
Government was the logical choice for that savior party. Who, in times of tight credit, could always borrow more as they were backed not by tangible collateral, but by the entire productive capacity of a nation? The New Deal came with a flurry of spending and appeared to be gaining small successes before America was dragged into WWII. WWII ballooned the nation debt and the period following the war was marked by productive prosperity and growth. As the American economy exploded the debt, once over 100% the level of the annual GDP shrank steadily until the 1980's. Reagan helped start a ballooning of the National Debt that, with Obama following Bush's trends, has become truly bipartisan and the defining hallmark of a new American system.
I view this gamble will continue being made until, at some point, the payments made on the national debt will take a prohibitive chunk of the GDP and the tired and true methods of throwing money at economic woes will no longer work. This endpoint comes, at least logically in my mind, at a time where historically average gains in GDP are no longer sufficient to pay for the debt. The responses thereafter really don't matter. At that point the more the government tries to help, the worse things will become. The first response would be to slash any extraneous programs. Problems, once heralded as solved and dead would spring up with any ugly ferociousness. The people, dependent on a small level of aid will be the first to be cut. Eventually, those once dependent on aid will be poor enough to reapply. Their creditors will demand they raise taxes to pay the interest, and if heeded, the raised taxes will cripple an already crippled economy. The only solution is WWIII.
That, I think, is the scariest aspect and is the end point of any rational inspection of plans of this personality. They only allow people to play two sides of one game, the entire time knowing the game may be a lie that while initially fun demands too much of the players to finish. WE can certainly avoid the end of the game if we duck out at half-time, but with everyone polarized on an issue that is just dollars and cents. Bickering about whether deficit spending by cutting taxes or deficit spending by social programs is more effective at curtailing unhappy times and preventing doom. Of course one always points the finger at the other, without anyone realizing that the debt is a number, and more important than where the money goes is the simple, objective fact that it is going up at a rate that would require an untold age of economic expansion to justify and reapy the costs incurred.
Keynes' followers always were quick to point out the loans would be paid by future prosperity, but each time of prosperity, instead of paying the loan, found ways to justify further expansions of the program. I ask simply: if the time to pay is in the future, and we constantly place desires of short-term expansion ahead of long term obligations; what significance does the long run play?
I will let my opponent answer this one as he is quite clear, as wise Keynes said, "In the long run, we're all dead."