Oh yeah. Let's get after Paul Martin and the Liberals. Martin was handed a huge deficit by the Conservatives. and the country was broke. Sure, some services were cut. What else do you do if you don't have the money? The first forty billion dollars in taxes goes just to pay the interest on Mulrony's debt. Think what that forty billion could do for health care or our military.
Indeed, that is the problem with conservatives. They don't want to cut any services (well, they won't mind cutting some for the poor) and they also want tax cuts. People here are tickled pink that they are getting handouts from Harper, the fact that he is borrowing the money from other people, bothers them not in the least.
No cuts to services and tax cuts. What is the inevitable outcome? Why, huge deficits, of course. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
I for one, admire Martin's guts. His goal was to balance the budget and he didn't care if it caused some hardship. Balancing budget is never a painless process. Indeed, if a government claims to have balanced the budget without causing any pain, that probably means that they did it with smoke and mirrors.