Happy $40 trillion national debt to all who celebrate!
asserted
who → celebrate → all
We hear from low-rent pundits regularly that the federal government is run by a “uniparty.”
asserted
government → hear → uniparty
They typically mean that both parties support unfettered immigration and cultural leftism, are subservient to Israel, or a variety of other false claims that fall apart under even minimal scrutiny.
uncertain
that → mean → scrutiny
Unfortunately, the real uniparty exists through its commitment to out-of-control deficit spending and an undying refusal to change course.
asserted
uniparty → exist → course
Democrats (sans Grover Cleveland) have always spent like drunken sailors.
asserted
Democrats → spend → sailors
Republicans used to at least complain (before folding like lawn chairs and passing egregious budgets to avoid being called mean names by corporate journalists).
asserted
Republicans → use → journalists
But even those days are gone now.
asserted
days → go → ?
Fiscal hawks no longer serve as the uncomfortable conscience of the Right.
asserted
hawks → serve → Right
That conscience has been evicted and fiscal conservatism is now an orphan ideology in Washington.
asserted
conservatism → evict → Washington
President Donald Trump has now added more to the national debt in under six years than former President Barack Obama did in eight.
asserted
Obama → add → eight
Under current projections, federal borrowing is on pace to hit $48 trillion by the end of Trump’s term.
asserted
borrowing → hit → term
A $40 trillion national debt is not just an abstract accounting issue for future generations to deal with.
asserted
generations → deal → ?
It is an active, compounding tax on the present.
asserted
It → compound → present
With interest rates no longer pinned to zero, net interest payments on the debt have become the fastest-growing item in the federal budget, now consuming more taxpayer dollars than national defense and rapidly closing in on Medicare.
asserted
payments → pin → Medicare
This debt service trap creates a vicious economic cycle.
asserted
trap → create → cycle
Federal borrowing crowds out private capital that would otherwise drive domestic innovation, investment, and wage growth.
asserted
that → crowd → innovation
Simultaneously, it puts pressure on the Federal Reserve to artificially lower interest rates or monetize the debt, leaving people with a choice between permanent, structural inflation or fiscal insolvency.
asserted
it → put → inflation
Progressives, predictable as ever, view the Treasury as an infinite piggy bank for welfare expansion and industrial policy, but the real shift has occurred on the Right.
asserted
shift → view → Right
The ascendance of “national conservatism,” a coalition of populist, protectionist intellectuals, has effectively and systematically purged fiscal restraint from the conservative movement.
asserted
ascendance → purge → movement
To the NatCon crowd, the state is no longer a dangerous power to be constrained by constitutional checks and balances, it is a weapon to be captured and deployed in the name of cultural and economic engineering.
asserted
it → constrain → engineering
Because their political vision relies heavily on federal subsidies, industrial intervention, and tariffs, the New Right has embraced a brand of economic illiteracy that rivals the Left’s Modern Monetary Theory.
asserted
that → rely → Theory
Trump routinely insists that broad import tariffs will raise enough revenue to pay off the national debt.
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tariffs → insist → debt
Obviously, this claim fails basic high school math.
uncertain
claim → fail → math
Total U.S. imports range between $3 trillion to $4 trillion annually.
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imports → range → trillion
Even a sweeping, destructive tax on every foreign good wouldn’t come close to covering our $2 trillion-plus budget deficit, to say nothing of the $40 trillion principle.
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tax → come → principle
The embrace of this foolhardy thinking by the economics-is-fake wing of the GOP explains why the New Right reacts with such hostility toward classical liberals and free-market economists who point out their flawed math.
asserted
who → explain → math
A telling example occurred on X over the weekend when Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham engaged in a feud with Independent Institute senior economic historian Phil Magness.
asserted
Basham → occur → Magness
Rather than engaging with Magness’s arguments, Basham resorted to a tired populist smear, accusing libertarians of only caring about “weed and porn,” and ludicrously accusing them of sitting out the fight against COVID-19 tyranny.
asserted
Basham → engage → tyranny
Magness, after all, is one of the key figures who organized and amplified the Great Barrington Declaration.
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who → organize → Declaration
In the eyes of the NatCon movement, apparently, anyone who insists on constitutional limits, free markets, and fiscal sanity must be delegitimized.
asserted
who → insist → limits
To admit that government spending has real-world limits and ramifications is to admit that the NatCon agenda of state-managed populist economics is built on a foundation of sand.
asserted
agenda → admit → sand
The country is speeding toward a fiscal cliff with two drivers fighting tooth and nail over who gets to floor it over the edge.
asserted
who → speed → edge
Both parties have their reasons to avoid talking about entitlement reform and mandatory spending, but the debt is stubbornly indifferent to political ideology.
asserted
debt → have → ideology
When the reckoning arrives, the uniparty will have to contend with the wreckage and the public backlash.
asserted
uniparty → arrive → wreckage
The Aporia
