Kahuna,

I like your style of trying to get away from the demonizations and instead, discussing issues. Here's my take on this topic:

Yes, the national debt has increased over the last 8 years, but a large part of that was the Bush administration's support for a typically Democratic agenda - more entitlements (prescription drugs for the elderly) and more education expenses (No Child Left Behind). Yes, the war played a big role too, but one must be intellectually honest and admit that Dems supported it as well. (Recall that it was the Clinton administration who first pushed for regime change in Iraq, and that Al Gore, in early 2002 was one of the first to call for a "final solution" for Saddam. Also recall that most Dems in Congress voted for the war.)

The other piece of the puzzle regarding debt is revenues. The simplistic view is that the tax cuts resulted in the debt growing. However, this ignores the fact that tax receipts went up significantly after tax cuts were enacted - giving credence to the notion that lower taxes do stimulate the economy thus creating higher overall revenue collected by the government.

So, where does this leave us in terms of this election. Obama, if nothing else, wants to be more of a Democrat than his predecessors with even more spending. So, that means more outflow. However, he wants to also raise taxes ... but only on the "rich" (I've heard that line before). So, somehow this top 2 percent or whatever of the population will be responsible for supporting all of the increased spending that he proposes (not to mention the tax "cuts" that he is dangling in front of the naive who think he will actually do that ... I'm still waiting for the middle class tax cuts that Clinton promised). Also, this tax increase will somehow be done without hurting the economy. If I didn't know better, I'd say that Obama's degree is in alchemy.

That's not to say that I'm letting McCain off the hook on this issue. He says that he wants to keep all of the Bush tax cuts intact. Perhaps this balance of tax cuts on the various economic classes is exactly precise in terms of providing optimal stimulation to the economy, but I personally would like to see him take a more open view on perhaps jiggling with the rates for different groups. However, at least McCain seems pretty good from the spending perspective so even if he does nothing on the income side of the equation, he likely won't do much damage on the expense side. The same can not be said for Obama.