The fact is this: We are stuck with the National Debt until it causes a catastrophic financial collapse, which is inevitable if not subject to accurate forecasting. No President will ever take serious steps to address it before that catastrophe, and no political party will use its majority in Congress to do so either. Both parties and all of its Presidents since World War II are equally responsible for the irresponsible expansion of the Debt. Both parties are therefore ethically estopped from complaining about it.

Yes, the debt contributes to inflation and acts as an anchor on the economy. But if it was magically cut in half tomorrow, and it can’t be, it would still be dangerously large. Donald Trump said he would eliminate the National Debt before he was elected President and before he knew what the hell he was talking about—or not: since eliminating the National Debt or at least paying it down is universally seen as a good thing, indeed as a critically important thing as long as nobody has to suffer as a result, Presidential candidates usually say stuff like this, though Trump, as usual, was more hyperbolic than the rest. Obama promised to reduce the National Debt, and of course he didn’t even try.

Reducing the debt, never mind eliminating it and at this point even slowing its growth, is obviously impossible because it is political suicide. Presidents and parties want to do things. Reducing the debt means undoing things that have already been done. It means not just trimming around the edges, like DOGE—even saving billions of dollars is now exactly trimming around the edges—but committing to wholesale elimination of major projects, entitlements and policies with huge constituents, and that means losing election, power, all that politicians crave.

We last had a chance to get serious about bringing down the National Debt when Ross Perot, a third party candidate, ran for President in a weak field (Bush I and a little known Arkansas governor) on that platform. Perot lost, in part because he was weird (only a weird candidate would be serious about eliminating the National Debt), but the President who was elected, not by any deliberate action on his own, got lucky with the so-called “Dot Com Boom” and managed to have net surplus of funds in his second term from fiscal year 1998 through 2001. This reached a peak surplus of $236 billion in 2000, which effectively eliminated the federal deficit during those four years. Clinton and his party immediately used most (but not all) of that surplus to pay down the National Debt by what was then a significant amount, and was rewarded by being wiped out in the 2000 election. (The fact that Clinton was a master liar and sexual predator didn’t help, of course.)

Raising taxes is the other part of the National Debt fantasy. It is used by the Left as a weapon of class warfare, and by the Right as proof of progressive profligacy. An exchange on “X” illustrates the problem:

Trump’s “Make America Great Again” theme made eliminating the National Debt an impossibility, and that should have been obvious. His second term goals, which require undoing the disastrous results of Democratic Party policies like open borders and the projection of national weakness and fecklessness abroad, require spending a lot of money. The growing Far Left of the Democratic Party embraces policies that will require spending even more money the U.S. doesn’t have to spend: Medicare for all, banning fossil fuels, free college education, guaranteed housing, “living wages,” etc.

Conclusion: the National Debt will keep growing and eventually crush us. Both parties are committed to a “we’ll be long gone before that happens, so we don’t care” attitude, and there is no way to change it.

Sure: this is irresponsible, incompetent and selfish. It is also human nature.

Sorry.