There is a big lie that we in the United States keep telling ourselves. It is particularly true on the political Right, but it’s true across the board.

Here’s the lie: We want our government to be fiscally responsible in some way, shape, or form. It’s clearly a lie because we keep electing politicians who eschew being fiscally responsible in any way, shape, or form, regardless of who runs the government.

The spending keeps going in one direction — and that direction is up. There’s a reason we are running a $34 trillion national debt at this point in time, and it is likely that that more debt is going to continue to accrue because nobody takes this problem particularly seriously.

And they’re not going to take that problem seriously until we run smack into a wall.

[I don’t disagree with Ben in general, but he and others are picking the wrong targets. They are trying to force a solution through discretionary spending, but you can’t end the deficit that way. We’re running $2 trillion annual deficits, and the total level of discretionary (ie, that authorized in annual appropriations) spending in FY2022 was only $1.7 trillion. Holding up appropriations won’t fix the problem. The REAL lie we won’t address is that our statutory (mandatory) spending — which can’t be altered in a budget process — can be maintained by trimming appropriations. To fix mandatory spending. Congress has to pass new statutes modifying or eliminating Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs that get funded even when shutdowns take place, because they are self-executing via statute (hence ‘statutory’). Take a look at this CBO breakdown and get a sense of what the real fantasy is. — Ed]