The US has a problem where government revenue has been increasing by the usual amount (i.e. as a percent of GDP it's within the same range it has been for 70+ years), and is therefore the highest it's ever been before in real dollars, but spending has increased by even more than that, and in particular spending has been increasing faster than GDP. But for the last few decades we've had people saying "deficits don't matter".

The trouble is, they kind of do, and now "interest on the debt" is eating a chunk out of the budget that rivals the entire Department of Defense. So not only is spending growing faster than GDP, a huge chunk of the money that had historically gone to cover even the traditional spending is now going to interest. And if the deficit stays how it is, that's only going to get worse.

The result is that there is no "tariff revenues" to spend on anything. Even with the additional revenue, spending still needs to go down just to tread water.

And then the question is, is the thing you're proposing worth more than the additional cuts it would take to cover it, i.e. what do you want to not have in order to have that?

> The trouble is, they kind of do, and now "interest on the debt" is eating a chunk out of the budget that rivals the entire Department of Defense.

Deficits do only sortof matter, but you people (I don't live in the US) are wildly undertaxed by big economy standards, and tax increases at the higher end could solve a lot of your fiscal problems.