During the early stages of recovery from recession, the unemployment and lower living standards caused by axing spending and raising taxes would come on top of already high unemployment and declining living standards. People would hurt more, and the economy would probably slide into negative growth again. When a more strident economy emerges, the White House and Congress should then move toward tax hikes and spending cuts.

Some say this won't happen. The case for Bush seems to be that he would have nothing to lose as a lame duck by making the hard budget and tax decisions to get the deficit down. But remember that Bush wants to trim the budget so he can afford to cut taxes, not the deficit--he and Clinton agree that the deficit isn't the biggest problem in America.

Would President Clinton cut the deficit? He has promised to slash it by half in his first term. That's pretty optimistic given the new spending he would implement.

But he would be an idiot not to cut the deficit by some amount. It's too politically popular an idea, and we all know that Clinton likes politically popular ideas. In addition, once the economy is moving again, cutting the deficit will boost consumer confidence (according to most confidence polls) and thus spur the economy further. It's a win-win scenario for him.

Ross Perot and his supporters laud him as the candidate who's being honest with America. They say Americans are fooling themselves if they don't move immediately to pulverize the deficit.

But their reasoning doesn't make sound economic sense. Painstakingly balanced books may the main goal of a good businessperson, but they shouldn't be the main goal of a national economy.

Perot isn't latter-day Paul Revere, here to warn us of inevitable disaster. He's more like a political version of the Maytag Man, here to repair something that doesn't yet need to be fixed.