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The Republican party is generally claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Note the term "claimed" here; I do not think the record of Republican governance proves this claim at all well, but nonetheless the default expectation seems persistent. When I was younger, this was certainly a selling-point of the party to me, and I voted for Bush II in the hope that he'd get government spending under control. Then 9/11 happened, and he wasted trillions wandering our military through the middle east.
Now the debt is very bad, and people are once more raising the banner of Fiscal Responsibility. Is it in Republicans' interest to enforce "fiscal responsibility", and if so, how? If we were to seriously cut spending and raise taxes, as people claim the fiscal situation demands, this would almost certainly cost us the next election. In the best possible case that I can see, we would be expending our political power to create stable economic conditions for our opponents to then rule. The more likely case would be us expending our political power to ameliorate spending that our opponents increase to gain power for themselves, resulting in a much shakier economy and our complete political irrelevance.
Why not offer the Fiscal Responsibility mantel to the Democrats? The economy is very complicated after all, and they are at this point clearly the party of Expert Opinion: who better to determine and implement the hard-nosed measures necessary to right our economic vessel? When I was younger, the obvious rejoinder would have been that they would do a bad job of it and disaster would result, but it seems to me that we have not done all that much better, and disaster seems likely in any case. If disaster cannot be meaningfully avoided, then why expend limited resources demanded by a serious political conflict on an unfixable resource-sink of a problem? What's the actual plan, here?
As RandomRanger says below, sometimes you have to think about more important things than winning the next election. The debt is a very serious problem that will be resolved either by fiscal responsibility or by default. Both of these are going to hurt, but one is going to hurt much more than the other. If the voting public can't look beyond the immediate present and choose the least worst option (rather than merely punishing the party that institutes fiscal responsibility), then we do not deserve democracy and would be frankly better off in a political system where people with low-time preferences aren't allowed to dictate policy. I have some hope that maybe people aren't quite as stupid as they seem. Last time we talked about politics, even my dad who is a staunch entitlements defender recognized that we need to do something about the deficit. Being a budget hawk is coming out of conspiracy territory and into the mainstream.
Will something actually happen to prevent default? I unfortunately doubt it. There won't be higher taxes for at least the next 3 years, and Trump seems unwilling to actually touch the big spending categories. And I sort of see why. Can't cut defense because we are on the brink of WW3. Can't cut medicaid or social security because your voting base will revolt. The theatrics of DOGE conveniently dance around this fact, and I have been disappointed to see how many otherwise very on the nose bloggers/posters here (John Michael Greer is at the top of the list) are unable to see that. Cutting the NIH and NSF budgets, while it might feel good, doesn't fix the problem (and actually makes it worse as you actively contribute to brain drain of talent). We basically need either the boomers to die much faster than expected, for them to take one for the team and not collect social security (I would eat my hat), or some kind of massive improvement in health of the general population that greatly reduces medicare/medicaid expenses. None of these are going to happen, so we are basically fucked.
I don't see why Trump gives a shit. He can't be reelected anyway, so who cares if the voters hate him? His career in politics is over either way. He's in the ideal position to do necessary-but-unpopular things. Granted that he needs Congress to play ball (he can't just cut spending on welfare himself), but Trump himself doesn't need to worry.
To me he seems nothing like a visionary leader who accepts temporary pain for the greater, long term good of his people. His first and second priorities are his ego and his embezzlement.
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