The House passed its FY 2004 budget resolution last week, officially kicking off the Congressional budget debates for the coming fiscal year. The Senate voted to preserve all but $100 billion of the President’s tax cut, but won’t complete work on the budget resolution until Wednesday, March 26. Though the budget resolutions of each chamber reflect much of the President’s own budget proposals, and especially his $726 billion tax cut, neither resolution passed without a great deal of effort among Republican leaders to ensure that Congressional members voted together.

We can either choose to pay now, or we will have to pay later -- preventing social ills is much cheaper in the long run. From a purely economic standpoint, many economists agree that a return to deficits is not a problem -- running a surplus would actually be more of problem -- and that this economic climate prescribes more government spending, not less.