Government debt: Should we be planning to increase that?

I thought this was a good piece on the differences between Sen. McCain's and Sen. Obama's tax policies. The bottom line seems to be that both of them want to continue one of America's favorite policies: Spending money we don't have.

McCain just wants to do it while lowering taxes for rich people. From the article:

With those big-ticket tax cuts plus the impact of other changes in the tax code included, McCain's plans would slash revenues by $4.2 trillion over the next decade while Obama's reduction would be a slightly smaller $2.9 trillion. Both would transform the CBO's small surplus over the 10-year period into big deficits, according to the tax center.

The two campaigns argue that it is not fair to hold them to the unrealistic CBO baseline. Rather, the campaigns like to compare their proposals to a current policy baseline which assumes the Bush tax cuts are extended and the AMT is patched every year. Under that baseline, according to the tax center, McCain's plan would cut taxes by $596 billion over the next decade; Obama's would increase taxes by $627 billion during the same period, reflecting the fact that Obama is raising tax rates on the wealthy and boosting the taxes they pay on dividends and capital-gains earnings. Obama is also not embracing McCain's proposal to cut the top rate on corporate taxes.

Regardless of the baseline used, the government's debt would go up sharply - by $3.5 trillion under the Obama plan and by $5 trillion over the next decade under McCain's plan, the tax center estimates.

Why not. That kind of planning has served us well so far.