There is talk about it, but the views are wildly diverging.
Republicans' 'One Big Beautiful Bill' last year added $4.7 trillion dollars to the debt. [1] But even before last year's OBBB, the US already had by far the lowest taxes (fed + state + local) among the major advanced economies in the world; in fact, the US could have raised taxes by more than 15% and still been lowest. [2]
The US also has the lowest spending (fed + state + local) among them as well. [3]
But even though US spending is the lowest among them, its tax rates are so very low they still are not enough to cover even its lower spending.
(Of course, all of the above is dependent on someone believing that the US is capable of standing up to comparison with other major advanced economies in the world.)
If our spending is far lower than peer countries, and our taxes are far lower than peer countries, to me it seems like the obvious place to start would be getting tax rates closer to (even if still lower than) our peers, but 1 of the 2 big US political parties vehemently objects whenever Dems propose tax increases. So the can ends up getting kicked down the road if an agreement can't be reached.
The GOP will talk about cutting spending, but A) won't identify exactly what programs they'd cut and what % of US spending it'd save, and B) Republicans actually increase spending, not cut it, when they hold all branches of government - their actions are the opposite of their talk.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us-debt-crosses-40-trillion-th...
[2] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/ap...
[3] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/Ap...
Now, if there was no debt and things were generally good, and they said, “if you want universal healthcare we will need to raises taxes by n%, here is the proposed plan that we will put to a vote in the fall.” That would a transparent and justifiable way to go about it. Taxes would go up, but people would get a vote, get something in return, and know that the government isn’t spending wildly without any plan to ever pay it back.
The merits of those numbers is certainly debatable, but they've at least been consistently calculated. They're the numbers we have to work with, and they do justify the idea that things are unpleasant, but not a crisis. The low price of US Treasury bonds is worrying, and definitely hint at a crisis on the horizon, but it's only partly due to the debt and more due to a generalized worry about the state of the US.
I don't know what to advise you as a single-issue voters. The solution is obvious and unacceptable: raise tax rates, close methods of tax avoidance, reduce spending on large discretionary budget items. Neither party is going to propose that, and no third party is going to get off the ground by suggesting it.
Republicans present themselves as the debt-avoiding party, and I think the best you can do is look for ways to tell them that you know that they've failed massively on that. They were handed immense levels of power to cut anything they wanted, and they wasted it on culture wars. You can try to shift their focus to actually the deficit, but that's a very big ship to turn. Their base isn't thrilled right now, but certainly isn't going to tolerate the other party gaining power, even if they did promise better governance.
Democrats would at least in theory like to raise taxes and reduce military spending, but it's damn near impossible. Republicans oppose both of those things, and the checks-and-balances system favors the status quo. It takes overwhelming agreement to achieve anything, and there remain many Democrats in right-leaning districts who are easily scared off of supporting the party on those issues.
I suppose you could go really off the rails and support the far-left approach of Modern Monetary Theory, which basically scraps the debt by conflating it with the currency. You pay off the debt with printed money, and then separately compensate for inflation by collecting taxes (and then just burning the money you collect).
I said it yesterday on here, Trump was right when he said "So long as oil is bought in US dollars, the debt doesn't matter." But when that comes down, it is going to hurt. That will be any time between next Tuesday and 50 years from now.
I really don’t see a way out of this that isn’t high inflation (about 15%), lower dollar valuation, bonds taking a huge hit, unemployment moving up, etc.
I mean, just look at AI capex. It’s directly competing for US debt - and if the AI bet works out - results in even less taxable income for the government as human capital is replaced by AI. For something like 40 states, the biggest employer is healthcare/insurance intermediaries, which are absolutely ripe for replacement.
/remindme! I’d bet gold price doubles in the next 2 years.
> spending wildly
1. Per the linked data in the GP comment, the US has the lowest spending of any of the major advanced economies in the world (fed + state + local). The idea that the US is "spending wildly" is a falsehood pushed by Republicans - the US is the lowest spender. The deficit/debt is because taxes are so low (also by far the lowest taxes among peer countries, so that even before last year's OBBB added $4.7 trillion to the debt (Reuters source in GP comment), tax rates could have been raised by more than 15% and still been the lowest (fed + state + local, source link in GP comment). Every large-scale system has some fraud; if we want to hire more people to fight fraud, sometimes the cost of fighting the fraud is more than the amount saved, but I have no problem with the idea either way - but none of that excuses Republicans claiming that spending is out of control, let alone even being average nor as high as our 2nd-lowest peer.)
2. If your suggestion is that raising taxes is not the best solution, what do you think is the best solution? A) Kick the can down the road and let the debt + interest continue to grow? B) Cut spending? If cut, cut what exactly and how much of the US $11T/year spending does it make up? https://www.bea.gov/data/government/receipts-and-expenditure...
The US is 11 or 4 when it comes to debt (depending on if you’re looking at gross or net debt).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...
Having low spending is not responsible if that low spending is still beyond what can be afforded without debt.
I think we need drastic cuts across the board to avoid this spiraling out of control. At the very least we need to stop making the situation worse. If people find the cuts untenable, then temporary tax increases can be explored, but in that scenario, I’d want to see the debt is going down. Since servicing the debt is the largest line item in the budget, once it’s manageable, some of those cut services can come back online. The whole nation will need to make sacrifices to get things under control, but if they don’t choose their sacrifice now, it will likely be forced upon them later when the house of cards falls.
I’m a fan of Buffett’s idea of making all members of Congress ineligible for reelection if the budget deficit grows too large. Putting something like this in place would align incentives and drive them to actually do something instead of just teasing ideas around election time.
How do you decide whether the spending is responsible? Is spending on the military responsible? Medicare? Social security? Paying interest that is due? Because those are the biggest categories of spending: https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function
How do you know whether the US is "spending wildly" or actually has the lowest rate of spending among its peer countries, and whether or not you believe it based on propaganda you've heard vs. deep comparisons to spending by peer countries, or whether it's because taxes are too low?
But OK, if we did go with the idea of spending cuts, the biggest categories are 1) military, 2) Medicare, 3) social security - what % of each of them are you proposing cutting? (Or if not the biggest items, what specific items are you proposing to cut, and what % of total spending does it make up?) Even if you think getting us to have the same tax rates as the lowest of our peer countries would be unpopular, personally I think that "drastic" cuts as you mentioned would be even more unpopular.
Also, looking at debt alone (instead of spending) does not inherently give you any insight about whether taxes were too low, or spending was too high. (That's why I recommend to look separately at spending and taxes against peer countries.)
The proposal you mentioned around reelection ineligibility sounds intriguing, although the biggest criticism I've seen of it seems to be that it's too simplistic for circumstances like a pandemic or recession - i.e. we should be building up our reserves during the good years (which is something I'm incredibly critical of Republicans for - they insist on returning taxpayer funds or cutting taxes during boom periods) so that we have funds available for the bust periods.