And don't forget the flipside. When a Democrat is in the office and a Republican raises red flags about the national debt, similar "no big deal" arguments are made ("you don't get it, a nation isn't running like a household, debt doesn't mean the same thing" / "oh yeah, well look how fast the national debt rose under <last Republican president>; checkmate!")

Going back over every president over my lifetime the deficit has trended down during Democrat presidents and up during Republican ones, so I’m not sure this is true!

There is no flipside and attitudes toward debt are not symmetrical. And outcomes are not symmetrical either - most of the debt is caused by republicans.

Only true in the 20th century. Since George W. Bush it's been Republicans by far. These are objective numbers. I'm not sure how people can argue with them.

Clinton's balanced budget and surplus is a bit of an outlier, and my understanding is that it had two causes. One was the line item veto, eventually overturned. The other was a booming economy and no major wars (peace dividend). We could have the latter now, of course, if we didn't go get into wars that don't concern us.

Bush is when I'd say the Republican Party gave up any actual belief in fiscal restraint. They still use it rhetorically because it sells with their base but they do the opposite when in power, which means they clearly don't really believe in it.

Trump is the biggest spender, and I don't think you can blame it all on COVID because he's still doing it. This shouldn't surprise anyone. As a shady hustler "businessman" he was known as the "king of debt" and borrowed and walked away so many times many banks would no longer deal with him under any circumstances. He's really one of the legendary practitioners of predatory borrowing. Along with "any publicity is good publicity as long as they spell your name right," his other motto might be "if you owe the bank a million dollars you have a problem; if you owe the bank a billion dollars the bank has a problem."

Yes, the minority party complains about spending, the majority party spends. "D" and "R" doesn't enter into it.

You'll note even the minority party rarely does much about it, like, proposing concrete spending cuts or anything. Not quite never, but rarely. Or pushing actual cuts through a branch they control even if it will be shot down by another. Proposing a concrete cut would open them up to criticism. They just complain vaguely about the spending.