Deficit Scold News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Americans living on tips has become unlivable. a collaboration with the fuller project, a non-profit woman-led team of journalists reporting on issues impacting women. also joining us, vice president and director of governance studies at the brookings institute, darryl west. he's the author of divided politics, divided nation. as you were going on, alex said to me, if only we had three people who could talk about this issue, and i think we do. >> i've always been a deficit scold. >> yes, you are. >> that's why i first ran for congress in '94 and it's only gotten much, much worse, from 4 trilli...

>> we're not interested in shutting the government down. what happens on march 1 is spending goes down automatically. march 27 is when the moment you're talking about, the continuing resolution expires. we are more than happy to keep spending at those levels going on into the future while we debate how to balance the budget, grow the economy, create economic opportunity. that's the kind of debate the country deserves. by the way, if we keep going down this path, we will have a debt crisis. it's not an if question. it's a when question. this isn't a republican or democrat thing. it's a math thi...

Thought you can't do that, you have to pay the government's bills. do you think this fight over priority is worth shutting the government down? >> we're not interested in shutting the government down. what happens on march 1 is spending goes down automatically. march 27 is when the moment you're talking about, the continuing resolution expires. we are more than happy to keep spending at those levels going on into the future while we debate how to balance the budget, grow the economy, create economic opportunity. that's the kind of debate the country deserves. by the way, if we keep going down ...

May disagree with you in some areas but agree about the impending debt crisis. some on the left disagree, calls you a deficit scold and worse than that. but the point is you're being alarmist about the deficit and its relationship to how the economy performs and grows. here's what he wrote in his column on friday. it was in fact a good thing that the deficit was allowed to rise as the economy slumped. with private spending plunging as the housing bubble popped, the willingness of the government to keep spending was one of the main reasons we didn't experience a full replay of the great depress...