If the government does not do X, Y, Z we will re-enter recession

[cthulu2016]

4. "sooner or later we run out of money"

As a matter of math, yes. There has to be a point where any debt is unsustainable without devaluing the issuing currency.

But we are far from that point. Japan has a much larger debt and her bonds still sell with almost exactly the same yield as ours, so we are far from any point of disaster.

What our policy should have been from the start was to triple or quadruple or whatever the word is for five-fold the deficit in the first year and use monetary policy to reign in any runaway growth/inflation if it developed. (It is easy to reign in growth with monetary policy) That would have offered the possibility of jarring the economy back into a self-sustaining growth mode.

What we do instead offers no such hope... increase the deficit to soften the effects of the down economy, but not enough to have any chance of really changing the economy and then limp along like that for ages.

The total addition to the national debt from such "caution" is likely to be greater than the cost of "irresponsibility" would have been.