The only "crisis" in US spending is that each party keeps shutting down the government when they don't like what the other one is doing. That's not going to go away with balanced books, but it sure is a recipe for disaster. It stops being a democracy when the decision making process stops being about majorities and starts being a game of "whoever doesn't blink sets the rules".

The country prints its own money; and right now it's the world reserve currency, giving the US a huge advantage when it comes to borrowing whatever it wants — the biggest threat to continuing to be the world reserve currency right now, is that the scale of cuts being talked about can only be met by cutting at least one of interest payments on government loans or things the US government considers to be "mandatory" such as pensions, social security, etc.

There are both immediate and long term consequences to the debt. In the short term we are paying a large share of revenue into debt servicing. We are all working months a year to pay interest. In the long term, we are impoverishing the next generations.

The govt can debase the currency by printing money. That only impoverishes people , except for the wealthy, causing greater wealth gap.

> There are both immediate and long term consequences to the debt. In the short term we are paying a large share of revenue into debt servicing. We are all working months a year to pay interest. In the long term, we are impoverishing the next generations.

Only if your economy doesn't grow.

> The govt can debase the currency by printing money. That only impoverishes people , except for the wealthy, causing greater wealth gap.

It impoverishes lenders and savers, but not borrowers. It's not as simple as wealthy or poor, as any can be any.

that's not what's happened in the past 5 years. assets have ballooned. cost of living has skyrocketed. wages have not kept pace. Rich got richer, poor got poorer.

How is growing dept a good thing? How is cutting costs a bad thing? Have you seen Argentina example? How did it turn out? Can the same thing be done in USA? Only reason to say no is because someone is directly profiting from not cutting costs. If you know Musk's story then you know why he is the only best candidate to do so.

> How is growing dept a good thing?

You can afford it, it's fairly close to a neutral thing, for a government to have debt.

Right now, the US gets to set the terms for those loans.

> How is cutting costs a bad thing?

Consider weight as an analogy: Most people can do with loosing weight, losing weight by getting enthusiastic amateurs to perform a quadruple amputation is not advisable.

Musk's target can only be met by deleting your entire armed forces.

And then you have to find another $1.2 trillion.

So the military and the entire CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS, NASA, Federal Highway Administration, FAA, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, Department of Justice, the Treasury, …

… all that plus the military still doesn't add up to Musk's target.

Unless you want to cut stuff that's considered "mandatory" (like military pensions), or the interest repayments on the very loans you wish you didn't have.