Gotta be cognisant of the global realities here. The vast majority of Western countries are running budget deficits at the moment. When your unemployment rate goes from 4-5% up to 8-10%, and corporate profits drop by a substantial amount that's a huge amount of revenue taken out of the tax base and govt expenses increase substantially (if you have an unemployment benefit). It's basically impossible to cut govt expenditure to break even or to run surplusses.
So the question is do you keep spending at a level which helps to keep the economy ticking over, or do you slash and burn as much as possible to reduce budget deficits to as close to zero as you can?
Some countries were smart in the 10 years leading up to 2008 and maitained healthy budgetr surplusses so that their govt debt:GDP was low when the shit hit the fan, which gfave them a lot more breathing room with deficit spending. The USA ran budget deficits for almost all of Bush Jr's reign, which meant the US debt:GDP was relatively high. Obama was on a hiding to nothing going in. And the fact he's even competitive in the presidential race, with an economy that's still rather stagnant is surprising, but it's probably less surprising if you give credit to the American voter that they know the reason the economy is in this mess is due to what happened between 2000-2008.
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."
Jimi Hendrix
