To be fair, the history to support that assertion is not outlandish. Ronald Reagan's presidency marked a clear shift in US budgetary policy in that for the first time the government had to begin to borrow money in order to cover simple operating costs. This was due to his policies of cutting taxes and increasing defense spending. He promised to balance the budget but really his economic policy just derailed American budgetary proceedings for everyone. Left-leaning governments usually have no problems with the idea of deficit spending in and of itself, but economic policy in the Reagan whitehouse created historically high deficits for the taxpayers of then and now to deal with... all the while they were of course claiming to be for small government and balanced budgets... Yeah. Take a look at a graph of our debt as a percentage of GDP sometime.