Comment by matteoraso
17 hours ago
And which party controls congress? I'll give you a hint: It's the party that spent decades advocating for irresponsible tax cuts without cutting spending[0].
[0] Yes, I know that the Republicans said that they were going to cut spending to match the tax cuts, but that never ends up happening.
The high inflation since Covid and $40 trillion in debt didn’t happen under one party
The (vast?) majority of the debt happened as the result of the Republican party both increasing spending and cutting taxes every time it lands someone in the White House and before midterms flip the House back to Democrats.
There's a fair argument to be made that the Democrats could/should have reversed these disastrous fiscal policies when they gained power, but it's important to be wary of Murc's Law while also acknowledging doing so would also burn a lot of political capital Democrats never seem to have much of.
The American electorate is a grade school child constantly evaluating which parent it likes the most. One tells you that you can eat as much candy as you like and play video games all night (neither of which hit you until the following day), while the other occasionally tells you to eat your vegetables, do your homework, and clean your room.
> The (vast?) majority of the debt happened as the result of the Republican party both increasing spending and cutting taxes every time it lands someone in the White House and before midterms flip the House back to Democrats.
Both parties have run an increasing deficit, with the only outlier being a small amount of time in the late 90s. The deficit is largely caused by social security outlays, medicare/medicaid outlays, and military spending, none of which are going to meaningfully change under either party
4 replies →
> The high inflation since Covid and $40 trillion in debt didn’t happen under one party
Between his first term and his second term to date (2+ more years to go), Trump is responsible for more that one quarter (29%) of US debt (USD 11.6T / 40T):
* https://time.com/article/2026/08/21/national-debt-trump-bide...
There was a bit of a mitigating circumstance of COVID (for Trump and Biden), which caused the debt to jump for many countries as well (and not just the US), but it's not like Trump et co are helping the math along with all the tax cuts and asking for a US$ >1T military budget.
But I would say a large reason why the US is in the fiscal position it is now in is because of Trump and a GOP Congress. (See also tax cuts under Bush 43 and Reagan; Bush 41 raised them a bit.)
But just one wins elections promising they will reducing it
Neither party has realistic plans to reduce the debt. It’s been that way for decades. Kicking the can down the road gets more votes
1 reply →
What's the other promising to do with it?
I'm a lot more sympathetic to Joe Biden temporarily causing a spike in inflation while helping America recover from a horrible pandemic than Republicans habitually running the country off of debt.
Joe Biden didn’t cause a spike in inflation, congress did. And the policies that caused it wasn’t under Joe Biden’s term
Also, inflation wasn’t temporary
Partly it doesn't happen because you can't really get much done even if you have a majority. You really end up needing a super majority.
The one thing both parties agree on though is running up a massive deficit
> You really end up needing a super majority.
Assuming you're talking about the Senate filibuster, then this can be changed or removed by simple majority vote. It's not in the Constitution, just a rule that the Senate adopted.
Like, personally I think that even sans filibuster, the Senate would move much slower than the House, because of election cycles.