Here’s how things have worked in American politics for the last 35 years:
With a Republican president in office, America suffers a terrible recession; if it’s not brought on by their policies, those policies certainly make it worse.
A Democratic president gets elected, then spends four or eight years cleaning up the mess.
With the economy stable and growing once again, voters elect another Republican president. After all, Republicans know how the economy works!
Shockingly, we get another recession.
Rinse, repeat.
Remarkably, the voting public seems not to have clued in to this pattern, which has cycled without fail since George H. W. Bush’s presidency; the myth that Republicans are good at economic stewardship is remarkably persistent, even in the face of all available evidence. While we don’t know if there’s going to be another recession in the next two years, given Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic and destructive decision-making, it’s certainly possible.
Which means that if and when a Democrat is elected in 2028, one of their first jobs is going to be undoing the economic damage caused by Trump. Some things will be straightforward — cancel the idiotic tariffs, end the even more idiotic Iran War if it’s still going on — but other parts of the task will be more complicated. The destruction of government capacity has been a significant drag on the economy in both the short and long term, and it will take years to rebuild what Trump has smashed. His effort to turn America into the global center of scams and cons, where white collar crime is legal and every opportunity for grifters to separate ordinary people from their money is encouraged, is another threat to the operation of a healthy economy that will be time-consuming to unwind.
Here’s something else we know, because we’ve been through it before: On the day a Democratic president takes office, all the rules about how the news media cover the government’s role in the economy will instantly change.
If I asked you what has happened to the budget deficit in Trump’s second term, you might have some sense that it has gone up, or you might just assume that it has, given the huge tax cuts of the Big Beautiful Bill. But you probably wouldn’t have that information at the top of your mind, because there has been almost no media discussion of the subject. And why is that? Because the elite media follows a simple rule: When a Democrat is in the White House, the deficit is a terrible threat to the future of the country and our children’s well-being, and Something Must Be Done about it; when a Republican is in the White House, the deficit is irrelevant. But guess what:
Aug 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. federal budget deficit for July jumped to $432 billion, a record for the month, as higher outlays and more negative tariff revenues also brought the 2026 fiscal-year-to-date budget gap to $1.799 trillion, topping the full fiscal 2025 deficit with two months left in the fiscal year, the U.S. Treasury said on Wednesday.
Last month’s budget gap, which was partly inflated by calendar shifts in benefit payments, was $141 billion, or 48%, higher than in July 2025 and was the largest monthly deficit since March 2021, when it hit $660 billion due to COVID-19 relief program spending.
The fact that the deficit is now nearly as high on a monthly basis as it was in the heart of the covid pandemic is simply stunning.
If you’ll recall, that was when we agreed to put the entire American economy into a kind of induced coma and flood it with government funds so both businesses and families could survive. Which, to be clear, was the right decision, but it did mean that for a time, the deficit was going to skyrocket with the combination of reduced tax revenue and increased spending. Now the deficit is nearly as high as it was then, even though we aren’t in a pandemic or recession. How is this happening?
You can point to the Supreme Court striking down many of Trump’s tariffs, which has cut off what was basically a sales tax on the country. But the real answer is part of that cycle we’ve been living with for decades: When Republicans control Washington, they give huge tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, but also increase spending, especially on the military. And right now, the administration is asking for $1.5 trillion just for next year for the Pentagon, on top of what the Iran war is costing.
So why aren’t the deficit scolds in the media shrieking their heads off? Again: There’s a Republican in the White House, so the deficit just isn’t an issue. Media bigwigs do not pound their fist on the table and shout “BUT HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PAY FOR IT???” when they propose trillions in spending and tax cuts — everyone knows their policy choices will just get paid for with more borrowing, so nobody bothers to question them about it. The opposite is true of Democrats, who must explain the combination of tax increases and spending cuts they’ll use to pay for any new program they suggest.
Like some other liberal commentators, I spent many years arguing that budget deficits deserved less attention from the media, for a couple of reasons. First, for the long stretch of time when interest rates were low it was basically free for the government to borrow additional money, and in those conditions it’s worthwhile to do so in order to fund important programs. Second, while interest costs are real, there was never any danger that America would just go bankrupt and need some kind of bailout, because the U.S. government is the world’s most important and reliable financial institution. Individuals, groups, and governments will always be willing to buy our debt. Yet the idea that we were on the verge of collapse was always part of Republican rhetoric; when Greece faced an economic collapse in 2010 and had to be bailed out by the EU, “What’s happening to Greece is going to happen to us if we don’t impose austerity to deal with our deficit!” became the standard Republican talking point.
But of course, that’s because a Democrat was in office. That argument was offered in utter and complete bad faith, which Republicans prove every time they take power and not only stop talking about the deficit entirely, but make policy choices guaranteed to increase it.
We know exactly what is going to happen once a Democrat is elected president — in fact, the ground will be seeded during the 2028 campaign. All of a sudden, the deficit will become an urgent matter that Democrats have to address, the subject of endless media coverage and fake concern from Republicans. Democratic plans for programs such as health care will be met once again with “But how are you going to pay for it?” Proposals for new commissions to recommend drastic budget cuts will be bandied about. Professional deficit scolds from organizations like the Peterson Institute will once again find themselves deluged with media requests. And because Democrats desperately want to be considered Serious People, they tend to react by saying “Oh yes, we take the deficit very seriously and we are committed to tackling it,” then find themselves hamstrung in their ability to govern.
This cycle must be broken. The proper way for them to react next time is to refuse to grant the premise that the deficit is an emergency — and treat the question with the contempt it deserves.
First, they should simply attack Republicans, and remind everyone of the pattern with which I began this post. It isn’t hard to do. “So you’re asking me how I’m going to clean up Donald Trump’s mess? Just like Joe Biden had to clean up the mess Trump made in his first term, and Barack Obama had to clean up George W. Bush’s mess, and Bill Clinton had to clean up George H.W. Bush’s mess? The first step is to stop electing Republicans who crash the economy.”
Next, they should shame the media themselves for the way this issue has been handled. When reporters ask “How are you going to deal with the deficit?” the answer should be not “I’m very concerned about it and will be fiscally responsible blah blah blah,” the answer is “I’m surprised to hear you ask that question, since you never bothered to ask Trump and the Republicans about the deficit when they were running it up. Why did you treat him with such kid gloves? If it’s so important, why didn’t you do your job? It’s hard for me to think you actually care about this issue any more than Republicans do, when you won’t treat both parties by the same standard. So my answer is: We’re going to fix this economy and lay a foundation for a better future. That’s how we’ll deal with the deficit.”
Don’t treat either Republicans or elite reporters seriously when they try to make an issue out of the deficit, because they aren’t serious people. If Democrats can do that, they’ll find themselves liberated.
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