Democrats have effectively been offering to cooperate and pay for all their budget proposals, or even entertain (as under Obama) and enact (as under Clinton) big bipartisan balanced budget deals — even as Republicans repeatedly defect and show no interest in paying for anything. The rational move in such a game is to start defecting yourself, and declare that you’re not going to pay for anything either.

So even if you want to generate balanced budgets in the future, Democratic deficit spending might be a way to get Republicans more on board with that going forward.