The Republican policy has been to starve the beast for 40 years. They are willing to bury the country in unsustainable levels of debt in order to force their agenda for government because they can't reach their goal electorally. They care more about that goal than the financial health of the nation or what the impacts of destroying the financial health is on all of us. They would rather intentionally make us too broke to function so that we can't afford government than have us rich but with a functional government. This has been their publicly stated policy for 40 years.
The Republican party is wholly a party for the Rich and wealthy.
All other claims to the contrary are attempts to deceive people that this is not the case.
Because raising taxes was never part of their deficit reduction strategy. Not that it matters, being fiscally conservative was never an honestly held belief but simply a campaign slogan.
Raising taxes was never part of their deficit reduction strategy, sure. But we're talking about the fact that they cut taxes. You can't fix a deficit by reducing income.
Agreed, unfortunately. The amount of people that actually care about the national debt is near zero in reality, despite many stating otherwise.
When their party of choice comes into power, it's always "spend, spend, spend" - how else do you do all the things you want to do while in power? Then the table turns and they pretend to care while the other party takes a turn.
Round and round we go, deeper and deeper in debt, spending like a there's no tomorrow.
It would be an easy strategy to defeat - the two biggest Democratic states, California and New York, are close to the top in terms of cost of living. I know fiscally conservative doesn't mean "cheap to live" but most people see them as the same.
The media environment is so right wing (yes really) that Democrats don't get the credit for that kind of thing while Republicans don't get the blame for absolute ransacking of the country.
Fiscal conservatism only exists as an ideology when paired with hurting brown people. It does not exist as a meaningful political camp otherwise.
There is a reason that fiscal conservatives spend all their time on food stamps, environmental regulations, and a few random research projects and not even examining any of the top four costs that make up the overwhelming bulk of US spending.
This is basically how the Democratic party is trying to operate now and it's not working. They've been trying to cater to moderate Republicans who became disillusioned with Trump and it's gotten them very little in the last decade.
Is this not theoretically the libertarian party? (Of course in reality it’s often the Republican-lite party). It hasn’t proven to be a winning strategy
Government debt gets resolved eventually through inflation. There's never a point where we have to "pay it all back" and get the debt down to zero. We just end up paying of a $1 loan with a dollar that's worth only 50c.
So there's never a particular point that it "comes back to bite us" - if anything, the "bite" is happening already right now for all of us. Inflation is a form of taxation on currency. It's less like credit card debt and more like wage garnishing.
It's also worth pointing out that young people are less affected by inflation than old - retirees and people with savings. Inflation is good for people in debt. So it's not so much your children you have to worry about with today's debt level so much as it is yourself.
As GDP percentage, only two countries are higher: Italy and Greece (edit: and Japan).
Public debt is a significant political talking point in both cases (and even in Germany, with a much lower debt percentage).
The current US administration (and the last republicans in general) did an excellent job in pretending to be the ones fighting public debt when they are actually exacerbating it; I'm curious if there is gonna be a reckoning at some point.
I will never forget, and neither should you, that the last time we had a budget surplus, instead of doing _anything_ useful with it, the Republicans decided the best thing to do was to send everyone a check in the mail.
Among the useful suggestions of what to do with it, besides pay down the debt: Keep a slush fund in case of an unexpected war. (This was a few weeks before 9/11.)
Apparently the debt is keeping the Fed from raising interest rates as much as they did in 1979 when a similar crisis happened. Raising interest rates would increase the debt servicing costs pushing the US into a debt crisis.
I'm sort of surprised to see this on the HN front page. Typically the US national debt is only a mainstream topic of discourse when there isn't a Republican in office.
Economists often say that the national debt isn't analogous to consumer debt, because the US has a number of means to address it that the average consumer does not have, including the ability to print money.
And while that's true ... perhaps we as citizens and taxpayers would be better off ignoring that technicality and treating this debt as more like consumer debt.
Eventually, it's going to come back to bite us or our children, and we need to be willing to make some hard choices now to avoid having to make even harder choices later.
…add on another $1T for the student loans that will never be repaid. Those aren’t counted? There’s a shocker. Mr. Market lost his Marker up his ass a long time ago y’all. Plan accordingly.
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- Won't start a war
- Won't speak like a 5yo kid
- Won't run around and desert you
It seems more like an abandoned stance than a lie at this point.
> socially progressive and fiscally conservative
How about “socially progressive and fiscally effective”?
When their party of choice comes into power, it's always "spend, spend, spend" - how else do you do all the things you want to do while in power? Then the table turns and they pretend to care while the other party takes a turn.
Round and round we go, deeper and deeper in debt, spending like a there's no tomorrow.
There is a reason that fiscal conservatives spend all their time on food stamps, environmental regulations, and a few random research projects and not even examining any of the top four costs that make up the overwhelming bulk of US spending.
See also: X, Meta, Blackwater…
So there's never a particular point that it "comes back to bite us" - if anything, the "bite" is happening already right now for all of us. Inflation is a form of taxation on currency. It's less like credit card debt and more like wage garnishing.
It's also worth pointing out that young people are less affected by inflation than old - retirees and people with savings. Inflation is good for people in debt. So it's not so much your children you have to worry about with today's debt level so much as it is yourself.
Public debt is a significant political talking point in both cases (and even in Germany, with a much lower debt percentage).
The current US administration (and the last republicans in general) did an excellent job in pretending to be the ones fighting public debt when they are actually exacerbating it; I'm curious if there is gonna be a reckoning at some point.
I know us is buyoed by the petrodollar, but surely that only goes so far.
> The Government Accountability Office outlines some of the impact of rising government debt on Americans
Well, we found another agency that won't last much longer in this administration...
Among the useful suggestions of what to do with it, besides pay down the debt: Keep a slush fund in case of an unexpected war. (This was a few weeks before 9/11.)
Isn’t it Time to Stop Calling it “The National Debt”? - https://evonomics.com/isnt-time-stop-calling-national-debt/
That chart doesn't include WWII, which might be the only time that comes close.
From https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/d...
3/19/2025 $36,214,467,819,348.16. --> 3/17/2026 $39,016,762,910,245.14
Yet strangely all Republicans are silent
Are you feeling those tremendous efficiency gains yet?
And while that's true ... perhaps we as citizens and taxpayers would be better off ignoring that technicality and treating this debt as more like consumer debt.
Eventually, it's going to come back to bite us or our children, and we need to be willing to make some hard choices now to avoid having to make even harder choices later.