Was it? Lets see. The economy started to tank early in 2000 due to the collapse of the internet bubble and gas prices started to rise.

Before that there was a bombing of the WTC and two US embasy bombings.

The feds were hiking the interest rate and first thing in January 2001 they dropped it by 1 percent to spur the economy.

Then Taxes were cut in an effort to spur the economy.

The America suffered the worst ever terrorist attack which could have caused a depression but it some how sprang back.

In order to keep the economy going we are carrying a debt.

See the Keynesian economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics and read up before you give a knee jerk rebuttal

For example, Keynesians see Herbert Hoover's June 1932 tax hike as making the Depression worse.

Keynes's ideas influenced Franklin D. Roosevelt's view that insufficient buying-power caused the Depression. During his presidency, he adopted some aspects of Keynesian economics, especially after 1937, when, in the depths of the Depression, the United States suffered from recession yet again.

Keynes's theory suggested that active government policy could be effective in managing the economy. Rather than seeing unbalanced government budgets as wrong, Keynes advocated what has been called counter-cyclical fiscal policies, that is policies which acted against the tide of the business cycle: deficit spending when a nation's economy suffers from recession or when recovery is long-delayed and unemployment is persistently highâ€"and the suppression of inflation in boom times by either increasing taxes or cutting back on government outlays. He argued that governments should solve short-term problems rather than waiting for market forces to do it, because "in the long run, we are all dead."

In short, the government cannot tax itself out of a recession or depression. It must cut taxes and spend it's way out.









We are carrying the debit