Comment by alwaysthiserror

Surprising. Is that something common in Econ literature or something? It's definitely not the norm in poli sci journals, unless something's changed in the decade or so since I looked at many of those, since it just crowds out and distorts things that do contribute to the deficit.

It does hold government debt, but that's not really useful and puts it in a totally different category from "spending that contributes to the budget deficit".