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on one side of our debate a bold proposition don't worry about it but the other side is far more wary here are their closing remarks.

K:

mark twain famously told us that it's often easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled and i am here to tell you with my friend dr galbraith we have been fooled and you they are trying to fool you tonight and the american people are often fooled into getting confused about government deficits the word itself sounds like a problem you hear someone say the government's budget is in deficit it almost you know on the surface uh presents as a problem and what we've tried to do here tonight is to cast a different light on this thing that we call the deficit to remind you that on the other side of the government's deficit lies a financial surplus for someone who gets it and for what purpose those are important questions the cares act that i brought up a couple of times already tonight was an example of a government using its deficit to send unemployed workers an extra six hundred dollars a week to help keep them whole to send a twelve hundred dollar check to most americans in the pandemic to help out with costs um to help small businesses keep their workers on payroll and cover expenses that's an example of government using the deficit to deliver a a financial leg up for struggling people another example of using deficits was the tax cuts that republicans passed in 2017 a roughly two trillion dollar addition to deficits that delivered a financial windfall to the people in our society who least need the help so as a reminder every deficit is good for someone the question is for whom and for what right now the last thing we need to do is turn on government deficits to be afraid of them to begin to worry about them because if we do that our lawmakers in washington are going to pull back they're going to refuse to provide the fiscal support that our economy desperately needs and that's going to hurt all of us so i'm asking you not to worry about the deficit not to get fooled and to vote for the movement thank you.

G:

listen to worry is human to worry unnecessarily is neurotic we have plenty of things to worry about and the issue that divides professor kelton and myself from our opponents isn't really deficits or international debt the issue that divides us is whether we have the capacity to address the important problems that actually face us whether we have the capacity to stabilize our economy in the face of the pandemic and to deal with the public health challenges whether we have the capacity to reduce unemployment whether we can cope with climate change whether we can address inequality and the legacies of racial divide in our countries these are the issues that are in front of us our opponents say no we can't do that there are mysterious reasons of high finance why this is impossible they ought to quote john maynard keynes from another epic abra would rise cadabra would come down but this is not the way the world actually is we have seen as i've said many times so far in this debate from this year's experience from the experience of the past four years from the experience of the past 40 years that yes we can address these problems if we have the will the organization the capacity and the determination to do them we can't do it if we say oh no there's some mysterious financial reason why we can't that's our opponent's position but their position is really that they don't want to address these problems we do and we say once again if we can actually achieve this we can afford it finance is a bookkeeping matter for our countries it is a matter that's important but it is not a constraint and people should stop worrying about things that are not important so that they can focus their will and the attention on things that truly are thank you.

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and now to the winner our audience voted on whether we should stop worrying about national deficits then they voted a second time after hearing from our debaters