You know we live in wretched times when during the entirety of the current presidential election cycle our national debt, which is after all approaching 36 trillion dollars as of this writing, gets nary a mention from the two candidates vying for the job. The media, too, seem wholly disinterested.

To some extent, such a course of events was rather predictable. The same journalists who ran cover for 51 “former senior intelligence officials” peddling fake news in a coordinated effort to pull a lethargic Joe Biden over the finish line in 2020 cannot be expected to ask critical questions about our mountain of debt knowing their preferred candidate will be the first one implicated in the crime.

And in Kamala’s defense, it’s not like we can expect her to know the ins and outs of fiscal and economic policy. I’ll be patiently waiting tonight for Bret Baier to ask her for the definition of inflation. After she’s through ruminating about her middle-class family history, do you think we’ll get a cogent answer on the matter at hand?

Like I wrote: wretched times.

But Donald Trump — and frankly the entire conservative movement — should have done better too while he was in office. The national debt grew by some $3 trillion between 2016 and 2019, a period not even including the pandemic. I’m old enough to remember guys like Mark Steyn being all up in arms about President Obama racking it up by the trillions back in 2010 and ’11. Yet oddly, our side stopped being all that interested in this topic around, say, January 2017, with even the late Rush Limbaugh himself infamously exclaiming that “Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around.”

Respectfully, I beg to differ.

It would be one thing if the trend of ever-increasing national debt were reversed post-COVID. But, given that the federal government took in $4.4 trillion in Fiscal Year 2023 yet spent $6.1 trillion, this can hardly be said to be the case. Around $3.8 trillion of spending — 62% of the total spent and a whopping 86% (!) of total revenues — went to mandatory spending on programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other such fiscal boondoggles. That leaves 14% for “discretionary” spending, meaning spending where the government even has a choice left on whether and whither to let your tax dollars roll. This includes our nation’s military as well as interest on the debt.

Like The Donald, I’m all for torching the Department of Education, but its annual budget for FY2023 was $274.36 billion, or 4.5% of that year’s total government spending. If we’re serious about closing that $1.7 trillion chasm between revenues and spending, we’ll have to do more than nibbling around the edges. Realistically, the massive entitlement programs will have to be reformed and/or taxes raised to make the math work here.

Look at the chart below, imagining the trend line from left to right, and tell me if you think we need to increase our tax revenues or cut spending. But before you answer that question, also note that during the same period covering this chart the feds birthed two bazillion pages worth of regulations — without much involvement from Congress, mind you — mandating you to expend your private dollars on green energy, health insurance, and other government-preferred charities too. This comes on top of your taxes. And if you’re a business owner, the list of undesirable fluff spending grows exponentially, with the EPA, OSHA and the state Department of Whatever unfailingly looming over you like the Sword of Damocles to ensure you’re in compliance with their harsh mandates.

This is why a vote for Trump, regardless of all his fiscal shortcomings, is still the wisest move if you care about this country’s fiscal health. Once in a while, I’ll get into an argument on X about this with Democratic voters. They’ll invariably point me to research which shows that projected budget shortfalls ten years into the future grew faster under Trump than under Biden and Harris.

Perhaps. But there’s a difference between lower tax revenues as a result of tax cuts and slashing regulations, which allows us citizens to keep more of our paychecks in our own pockets, and spending a bazillion dollars on “energy” and “infrastructure” bills the greatest accomplishment of which is lining the wallets of favored industries, consultants, and other grifters at the expense of everybody else.

Read up on the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program if you’re still firm in your belief that Uncle Sam has our best interests at heart. This $42 billion program was part of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and meant to provide high-speed broadband internet in under-served areas of the United States.

But three years later, still not a single home has been plugged into broadband. It was calculated by some online that Starlink could have covered every under-served area in the entire country for a fraction of the cost and probably within a year. It took until this summer for the administrators to figure this out and admit Starlink to the BEAD program. But don’t bet the government toadies reviewing the applications and doling out the cash for the past 36 months have been working for minimum wage.

This is Kamala’s America: land of consultants, government busybodies, green mandates, non-profit organizations, grant writers, onerous regulations and red tape which piss off all but the most indoctrinated goody two shoes on the left, and a societal sclerosis covering our citizenry like a thick asphyxiating blanket as a result.

Trump’s America is the diametrical opposite of that: A country filled with people left to their own devices, developing their businesses, building homes, pumping oil, and keeping most of their earnings in their pockets to spend as they see fit. A reality once called the American Dream.

I know which I’ll choose. But for crying out loud, let’s cut spending money we don’t have and start paying down that debt.