[InTheArena]

Sorry, the entire political establishment learned that debt didn't really matter back during Bush and then Obama.

How different would the world have been if either of the two "grand bargins" that Boehner started, and then Obama torpedo'd last minute (in the first example) or the second one (which biden as VP torpedo'd) happened? No rise of the tea party, working bipartisan arrangement on spending?

Shit matters.

[malcolmgreaves]

The tea party was a front by the Koch brothers to pay less taxes. It was and always will be a thing by the rich, for the rich. It was also just wrapped up in the entire republican agenda of trying to sabotage the first Black president, because too many white folk couldn’t accept that the president was Black. There was never any possibility of a bipartisan agreement.

[notmyjob]

Well, I think just very rough numbers Biden added about 7 trillion, which was about the same as Trump 1, driven of course by the pandemic. I think we’re headed for another 6 or 7 trillion under Trump 2, give or take tariffs and whether we can Art of The Deal our way with Xi’s communist empire and enter some new era of AI driven prosperity. So if the total debt is, rough numbers, about 40 trillion, then the past 3 admins account for a substantial fraction 15-20 trillion, tough numbers, given that the economy has been objectively strong since Obama’s second term. We should have decreased to debt in those years of strength, aside from the short few months of the pandemic when vaccines were needed and temporary lockdowns had to be subsidized.