Why in the world would you lift your foot off the gas and risk rolling back down the mountain?

Something like this is happening in the fight to haul the United States out of the depths of the worst recession since the Great Depression. The deficit hawks — policy makers from the very same crowd whose crazy theories and rampant irresponsibility got us into this terrible fix in the first place — want the United States to step off of the stimulus gas, a move that might very well stall the current, extremely fragile recovery.

The latest struggle on this front has to do with the crucially important issue of federal relief to state and local governments, which are facing nightmarish budget scenarios. Consider the following comment from General Davie Jr., the chief of the Natomas Unified School District in Sacramento County, Calif.: