Let’s see: to reduce the deficit, you have to increase tax revenue or cut spending. To cut spending, you have slash funding for programs that might be popular. Voters won’t like that. That’s why so many Republicans who claim that the deficit is a serious problem, when interviewed on the subject, refuse to say what they would cut. Coincidentally, while Trump was running up the deficit and Republicans had control of the House and the Senate, they didn’t cut any programs; they actually increased military spending and cut taxes thereby increasing the deficit significantly. (Since the last balanced budget in 2000, the Republicans have run up $12 trillion in new deficit while the Democrats have racked up $13 trillion.) Now that a Democrat is in the White House, they are popping up everywhere declaring that the deficit sky is falling. Again, when asked where they would cut, they conspicuously refuse to answer.
Most economists do not think the deficit is a serious problem, but refusing to raise the debt ceiling– in essence, refusing to pay the bills that are due for mandated programs approved by Congress– would be a very, very serious problem.
It appears to be slightly hypocritical to complain about the deficit now when not a single Republican voted against the Trump programs that dramatically increased the debt.
That took longer to read than a CNN screen crawl. You see the problem? You see why some people want to talk all day and all night about secret documents and Hunter Biden’s laptop instead.