[Will]

The Bush campaign's claim that Kerry wanted to cut military and intelligence budgets came from votes in the late 80's/early 90's, when he voted to cut back on the annual increases to those areas. At the time, it was at the urging of then Secretary of Defense... Dick Cheney. I always thought it was funny that the Bush campaign was criticizing Kerry for going along with what Cheney wanted.

But, regardless of past votes, Kerry wanted to INCREASE military and intelligence budgets, by adding two active divisions to the US Army, and increasing the prominence of Special Forces throughout the military. If his platform isn't up on his website anymore, I'm sure you can find a copy Online somewhere.

What Kerry was going to do to decrease the deficit was to repeal the tax cuts for the upper brackets ($200,000+ yearly income), close loopholes in corporate tax code that gives tax breaks for offshoring workers, put back capital gains taxes to their 90s levels (that's the tax levied on the sale of stocks), etc. Basically bring taxes to a point between what they are and what they were under Clinton for those in the highest tax bracket, while leaving the middle-class and lower brackets as they are now. He also wanted to accellerate the training of the Iraqi security forces, and try to bring in UN troops to alleviate the pressure on US forces. But probably the best that could be hoped for is half the troops in Iraq after two years.

The deficit is so large now, that it probably would have taken the entire term for Kerry to even make a dent in it. Probably what would have been the biggest thing to bring the budget down is the clash between a Republican Congress and Democratic Presidency. That combination under Clinton caused the budget to fall to the lowest common denominator politically, just so it could pass, which resulted in the surpluses. With the plans to increase military size, the deficit probably would have increased, who knows.

As for the civics lesson... it's late. I need to sleep and go to work in the morning. I'll write up something about the relation government debt has to the economic status of individual citizens (especially in the US) later. The very, very short Version: The bigger the government debt, the more taxes citizens have to pay to cover interest payments on the debt, which lowers the availible capital for citizens. In an economy like the US, driven by consumerism, this has an impact on how much people buy. As it is now, it's being made up by people accumulating their own debt to buy more things, which they then have to pay interest on, giving them less money to buy stuff. Which they make up for by borrowing to buy more, accumulating more debt, giving them less money to buy... vicious cycle. Eventually, the debts will get so high, that the economy will crash. We're already seeing warning signs with increased bankruptcies with individuals and companies, but those are just minor shockwaves. When it really hits... well, take a look what happened during the Great Depression. Then multiply it over the entire globe.

The dangers of debt...