Funny thing is, if you looked for it, you could find that most studies agree that (properly executed) social spending actually saves money in the long run.
Depending on the country you live in a dollar spent on public healthcare that tries to tackle the minor health issues of poor people (the type of spending that gets most easily cut from budgets since it's not exactly flashy and it's about the poor anyway) can save you anything from 10 to 100 dollars in the future due to less need for specialized healthcare when some of those small issues have come big issues, or some of those big issues have made people effectively disabled, or at least unable to get and keep a job.
Same on education. Education is what keeps countries developing. It also helps tackle things like racism, teenage pregnancies, crime, drug-use and just generally makes the society work better because people just understand more about what goes on around them. It makes people better equipped to make their own futures, to create new companies, to get jobs in those companies. Essentially, just about everything and anything in a modern socieaty is dependant on how educated people are. Ridiculous amounts of young talent is currently wasted in the US (and many other countries) simply because they can't afford to get proper education.
It's just like business really; you can't just be making cuts all the time, you have to invest too. Otherwise your business will eventually fall behind those that have made smart invest in their future.
And also, what Lanny said; Republicans are the big spenders. The Clinton administration on the other hand could be said to be pretty much a model of smart government. They got more done with less money.
I don't much like Hillary Clintons rhetorics, but I have to say that at least it's very propably she'd be good for the US economy. She already has all the contacts she needs, good staff to draw from and the previous experience of Bill which obviously should help. The only problem would propably be that I don't see her getting the Republicans to support her plans this time any better than the last time around, which effectively would mean that a lot of good ideas would be buried in partisan strife.
That's why I see Obama as the better candidate in this area too; it's impossible to know how well he'd handle it, but he'd propably have much of the same staff, and anyway he seems much more capable of getting the US political scene out of the partisan rhetoric fortresses and get stuff done. (Of course, that could be simply impossible, but you can always hope.)
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