most governments use capital budgets to finance their long term assets. They require balanced operating budgets, but they borrow to finance expenditures whose benefits will be long term just as families do when they buy houses and cars. The federal government, however, does not have a capital budget. It makes absolutely no distinction between spending on welfare checks and spending on an asset that has continuing value, like a highway. It simply borrows indiscriminately so debt has no relationship to investment. The American people have no way of limiting their federal borrowing to genuine in vestments in their future.