Every single administration since the turn of the century, regardless of party, has run a deficit. It's clear that if we want fiscal responsibility (and I do, very much), we can't look to either of the major parties for it. Unfortunately the chances of that are low at best, and on top of that it's not actually very popular to do what is needed to balance the budget. The cold hard reality is that we will need to both raise taxes and cut spending to balance the budget, but lots of people are ideologically opposed to one or both of those things. And even if they aren't, there's no agreement on how to implement said tax hikes/budget cuts. It's a pretty grim situation.

It's helpful to avoid "both sides"-ing, or abandoning all hope.

Clinton through 2001 - ended with a 1.2% GDP surplus

Bush through 2009 - ended with a 9.8% GDP deficit

Obama through 2017 - ended with a 3.4% GDP deficit

Trump through 2021 - ended with a 12.3% GDP deficit

Biden through 2025 - ended with a 5.9% GDP deficit

Trump now - running even higher, though final data isn't yet available.

There's a clear pattern available, where one party reliably leaves makes the situation worse, and the other party reliably makes the situation better. The fact that Democrats cannot undo all of the massive damage done by each Republican administration does not mean "both sides" are the same.

If you want third parties to win, they realistically need to start with local elections, so they can gain momentum and take the spot of one of the majors. (also helpful to get rid of FTTP voting in as many elections as possible).

We're seeing great success with local democratic socialists, who keep showing that government can be a force for good, it can be improved, and it can be done without blowing budgets. It's a promising start, and it's clearly threatening Dems and the GOP alike.

I mean, there's fiscally responsible but the welfare department is never gonna make money at the end of the day spending is a political football. Trump's ICE got $10 billion, because what? So now in addition to DEA we have ICE and the TSA, and well, we can't un spend that money and shut them down so, well, shit.

Financially ledger is just a social construct; the IOUs of the past are never paid off as they never mattered.

Finance shit just keeps innumerates and those ignorant of physics believing wild end of the universe theories.

For more look up Debt jubilee's; humans wiped the debt of the dead off the books and no black holes opened within the sun, no gods descended from Olympus and slaughtered the children

Fucking mesmerizing how its not just MAGA nutters obsessed with old spoken and written finance traditions; different semantics than religion but same goal of kowtowing the proletariat.

This site helps propagate such paranoias with the tilt it has towards startup funding and yada yada. Smartest engineers I have ever worked with earned PhDs designing experiments for Tevatron and working on NASA satellites. We often had a laugh at how such social hacks dupe so many wannabe smart and educated people.

On the contrary startup genius software engineers are easily duped by social hacks.