Building an adequate reserve fund during good times may not be politically popular, but doing so can pay off during bad times as well as lessen the tendency to overspend when times are good. In principle, some smoothing of expenditures over good and bad times could also take place through the capital budget.
In particular, maintaining or even increasing the pace of construction spending when the economy is weak could add valuable infrastructure and provide local jobs; it may even allow a government to get more “bang for the buck” because of increased competition among private contractors when demand is slack.