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Who Wants to Balance the Budget?
Politics
Who Wants to Balance the Budget?
The deficit is a major problem for the U.S. The biggest obstacle to taming it is the voters.
Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images
The deficit is once again a major issue among Republicans, who have just emerged from a brutal battle to pass President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”. The bill, which makes the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent and provides a big funding boost for border security and national defense, was bitterly opposed by Thomas Massie (R-KY) in the House and Rand Paul (R-KY) in the Senate because of its dismal fiscal implications: an estimated $3.3 trillion increase in the national debt over the next decade, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office.
Widening the hole in the budget at a time when the United States is already running record-high levels of debt is a matter that ought to be of serious concern to the nation, especially given the circumstances. In 2024, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio stood at a staggering 123 percent, topping American indebtedness at the height of the Second World War—all without the U.S. being involved in a major war or suffering the effects of a recession. American indebtedness is also not just a problem for future citizens—the cost to service the country’s debt has grown rapidly. In 2024, the U.S. federal government spent $665 billion, 14 percent of the federal budget, on interest payments. That is more than the U.S. spends on any government program except Social Security and Medicare—and it may soon surpass Medicare, whose $700 billion in spending is the second-largest budget item.
Despite the obvious issues with increasing the federal budget deficit and consequently the national debt, neither Republicans nor Democrats show much interest in curbing the unfolding crisis. Most Republicans, even those skeptical of the debt increases, rightly pointed out that passing the Big Beautiful Bill was necessary to provide desperately needed funding for deportations and border enforcement, as well as providing a shot in the arm for American shipbuilding and missile manufacturing, key industries for effectively containing China. Democrats, on the other hand, lambasted the bill not for its budgetary extravagance, but for the only major cost-cutting measure implemented by the GOP, a work-requirement addition for Medicaid that is estimated to save $1 trillion by eliminating some 10 million people from the welfare rolls.
The lack of interest by politicians in curbing the national debt is only rational, given the almost complete lack of interest from voters in fiscal discipline. Much of Trump’s appeal was in his explicit rejection of Paul Ryan–style fiscal conservatism: “I’m not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,” the president has promised repeatedly. Major entitlement reform is no longer on the table from the right, for the simple reason that any major attempt to reduce expenditures on the biggest entitlement programs, the ones Trump has promised not to touch, would be immediately and harshly punished by older voters, who are the largest demographic in the U.S. and the most likely to vote.
The other option to curb the debt would be to raise taxes, something almost equally unpopular with voters and deeply contrary to the most fundamental impulses of both the GOP base and Republican politicians. Tax cuts have been at the center of Trump’s legislative accomplishments both in 2017 and today, and despite a more populist approach towards entitlements Republicans show little inclination towards leaving their tax-cutting sentiments behind and adopting a tax-and-spend policy.
Democrats, who are today no less enthusiastic about government spending, entitlements, and welfare than yesterday, have become more reticent about taxation. Their soak-the-rich rhetoric still plays well to some sections of their base, but as the country polarizes by class and the Democrats increasingly lose blue-collar workers and become the party of the upper-middle section of the country, the political benefits of increasing taxes on the rich have become more and more tenuous. Thus, almost none of the rhetoric the party has deployed against the Big Beautiful Bill was aimed at convincing voters it represents an impending fiscal calamity—there’s no market for it on the left, either.
Thus, Massie and Rand’s ostensibly principled stand in opposition to the bill is essentially performative. There is no “fiscally responsible” option on the table, not from the nefarious betrayal of the MAGA movement or the Republican Party, but because the American public does not want it. Republicans and Democrats alike are acting in accordance with the wishes of their constituents: They want lower taxes, more spending on the things they find important like defense and border security, and no cuts to their government-provided welfare benefits. The only way this is achievable is by blowing an ever-larger hole in the federal budget, and as the consequences are not immediately dire, both congressmen and voters are happy to make the trade. The unhappy question is not “will we solve America’s national debt or not”; it is “will we achieve our political priorities while blowing up the deficit or not.”
This situation is only likely to worsen in years to come. Over half of the federal budget is spent on Social Security and healthcare benefits, which overwhelmingly benefit wealthier, older, retired Americans at the expense of young working people. As America’s fertility rate falls, older Americans outnumber younger ones in an increasing proportion, and wield correspondingly greater political power. Older Americans are also disproportionately likely to vote and contribute to political causes, having both more resources and more time than their younger counterparts. Nor is there an AARP equivalent for young people to lobby Congress to reduce payroll taxes and old-age entitlements.
The out-of-control federal deficit is thus, unfortunately, symptomatic of a deeper and more profound challenge to the American system of government. The idea that democracies fail once the public accustoms itself to voting public largess from the private purse is a venerable one, and an argument that has often been seen as discredited. But there is no question that something along those lines confronts the U.S. today. The Social Security system was never designed for a populace as long-lived as modern Americans, or one with the age-distribution the modern fertility collapse has produced. Any significant reform, however, would be political suicide: Entitlements, once expected, cannot be easily or even peacefully revoked. Political grandstanding, like that of Massie and Rand, is no solution.
What a solution might look like, if there is one, is unclear: Japan, which has suffered from a very similar problem for decades longer than the U.S., is no further towards remedying the issue than America.
Until such a solution presents itself, Republicans have decided that, if we as a country are going to spend ourselves into bankruptcy, we might as well get deportations out of it.
The post Who Wants to Balance the Budget? appeared first on The American Conservative.
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