As an absolute, yes.
I agree that the government needs to have tools to even out the business cycle, especially when a crash appears imminent.
However, one needs to have some mechanism to control spending. In other words, we need to have some definition of "bad years" and "good years". Or we need something like the EU's policy of having member countries [link|http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4119282.stm|commit to having budget deficits of < 3% of GDP]. Yes, it's fuzzy (Germany has gone over that limit, as have France, Italy, Portugal...), so it's no silver bullet either.
As it stands now, there's almost no constraint on spending by the federal government. The opposition party doesn't have the votes to impact the budget in Congress, and the president has never vetoed anything. Some sort of statutory requirement, with teeth, is needed. Even the Clinton-era [link|http://www.reason.com/rauch/021305.shtml|offsets] would help greatly.
Not that I expect it to happen any time soon.... :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
