Large and growing federal debt over the coming decades
would hurt the economy and constrain future budget
policy. The amount of debt that is projected under the
extended baseline would reduce national saving and
income in the long term; increase the government’s interest
costs, putting more pressure on the rest of the budget;
limit lawmakers’ ability to respond to unforeseen events;
and increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis, an occurrence
in which investors become unwilling to finance a government’s
borrowing unless they are compensated with very
high interest rates.
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/52480-ltbo.pdf
You're a libertarian, so that means there's a strong likelihood that you usually vote for Republicans. Now your answers apparently address the desire for a lower deficit, and you claim that both Republicans and Democrats as hypocrites when it comes to the deficit.
Well, a wise Man once said, "By their actions shall ye know them." So what have been their actions when it comes to the deficit? Let's look:
Reagan: Slashed taxes, and wonder of wonders, the deficit exploded...but he didn't care. Cheney once said, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter"...and Bush 41 called Reagan's "trickle-down" economics by a different name: "Voodoo economics"...because they depended on the magical thinking that lower taxes would somehow result in higher tax revenue.
Bush 41: Took over while we were recovering from the '87-'88 S&L crisis, and faced another recession...and he reacted to that recession by raising taxes against the howls of protest by his party. In my opinion, it was Bush 41 raising taxes (and not any huge move by Clinton) that is largely to credit for our mid-1990's economic boom. Deficits still went up, but at a slower pace than under Reagan.
Clinton: What Clinton did right was to slow down the growth of spending. That, combined with the increased revenue from Bush 41's tax hike and with the dot-com boom, resulted in the first budget surplus since LBJ (which was a questionable surplus, unlike Eisenhower's real surplus). Clinton's surplus was projected to pay off our ENTIRE federal debt by 2012.
Bush 43: Slashed taxes, gave away the surplus, ran two wars (one of which was wholly his fault) and paid for both wars with the national credit card instead of raising taxes as had been the case with ALL previous wars, passed a law that prevented Medicare from being able to negotiate for lower drug prices...and by the time of his last budget (2009), he handed Obama a $1.5
trillion deficit and (in January of 2009) an economy that was bleeding over 700K jobs per month.
Obama: I know, I know, y'all hate him...but by the time he was done, he had cut the deficit by over half, and we had had over
seventy consecutive months of private-sector job growth, by FAR the longest such stretch in all American history...an accomplishment that any Republican would give his left nut to be able to claim. YES, the federal debt still doubled...but at least Obama - unlike
every other Republican president after Eisenhower - cut the deficit in half.
What's the point for all this? The pattern's obvious - you might not agree with how we "big government" Dems do things, but when it comes to presidents, look at the condition of the economy at the end of their watch: Reagan and Bush 43 were terrible for the deficit and debt, Bush 41 was better (and he was the one who raised taxes)...whereas Clinton and Obama both left the economy in FAR better shape than it was in when they first took office.
Indeed, by their actions shall ye know them.
