Of course everyone is familiar with the phrase , is that glass half-full or half-empty as a test for a person viewpoint. I think I have another chart that serves a similar function for the political viewpoint.

So here is a chart showing federal revenues and federal outlays for the US government. As you can see that is a terrible disconnect between what we take in as a government and what we spend as a government. The ultimate source of this disconnect is that people want more services than they are willing to pay for.

If you are a Partisan Republican you focus on the dark blue line and insist that it be bent down until it is under the light blue line. (At least in theory. As the graph clearly shows, the republican did nothing to change the curve of the dark blue line while they were in power.)

If you are a Partisan Democrat you Focus on the light blue line and insist that it be raised until it meets that Dark blue line.  (Of course you ignore how sharply you turned that dark blue line up. That’s An Inconvenient truth.)

Aside from a brief period while the Government was split in the 90’s, we don’t live within our means regardless of the political party in power. It was very recently — election-wise — that Prominent  Republicans informed us that ‘Deficits Don’t Matter’™ before they discovered the horror if deficit spending — if it is a democrat doing the spending. Of course in order to try to curry favor with the majority of the population the Democrats are currently pushing ‘Tax The Rich’™, which of course returns us to people want services but are unwilling to pay for them.

Persoanlly I say both side of the equation must be addresses. We are spending too much and revenues must be raised. We are not going to get our of this hole with wishful thinking. Sadly that is the only thing we have a surplus of.