Republicans and the Deficit: The Credibility Gap
As a fiscal conservative and registered independent, I have spent most of my adult life voting Republican, believing—as Republicans historically claimed—that government should be smaller, leaner, and live within its means. I do not think it is moral to fund today’s consumption by sending the bill to our children and grandchildren. For decades, Republicans campaigned on exactly that principle. They warned of "Democratic runaway spending" and presented themselves as the nation’s guardians of fiscal discipline.
That brand is now bankrupt.
The Record Under Unified Republican Control
For the fiscal year that just ended, Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. They had every institutional tool they claimed they needed to rein in spending and put us on a sounder fiscal path. Instead, after months of noise and brinkmanship over the debt ceiling, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and even a government shutdown, the bottom line barely moved: the deficit remains enormous, the government is no smaller, and the long‑term outlook is worse.
Start With the Numbers
Start with the numbers. In President Biden’s last full fiscal year, 2024, the federal government ran a deficit of about $1.8 trillion—roughly 6.4 percent of GDP—on outlays of around $6.9 trillion. Federal spending that year was approximately 24 percent of GDP, and the debt stood just under 100 percent of the economy.
Fast‑forward to fiscal 2025. With Republicans now in charge of the presidency and both chambers of Congress, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal deficit was again about $1.8 trillion—roughly 5.9 percent of GDP—on spending of about $7.0 trillion. In dollar terms, the deficit fell by only a sliver, on the order of tens of billions, not hundreds. As a share of the economy, federal outlays remained stuck in the same 23‑percent‑of‑GDP range. In plain English: for all the Republican rhetoric, the basic fiscal picture under their unified control looks almost identical to the last year of the Biden administration.
The Structural Outlook Is Even Worse
If anything, the structural picture is deteriorating. The CBO projects that, absent major policy changes, annual deficits will average around 6 percent of GDP over the coming decades, and debt held by the public will climb from roughly 100 percent of GDP today to well over 150 percent in the 2050s. That is not a path to fiscal stability; it is a slow‑motion loss of control.
Republican leaders have tried to argue that they inherited a bad hand. And it is true that the main drivers of the long‑term imbalance—an aging population, rising health costs, and interest on the existing debt—did not begin in 2025. But that is precisely why honest fiscal conservatives have long argued that you cannot afford to make the problem worse. You cannot simultaneously warn that the house is on fire and then spend your time pouring gasoline on the roof.
What Republicans Actually Did
Yet that is exactly what Republicans have done. Their signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act made permanent the 2017 tax cuts and layered on a grab bag of new tax preferences. The CBO and other analysts estimate that the law will add on the order of $2.5–$4 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade, once higher interest costs are included. That is not fiscal responsibility; it is deficit finance dressed up as reform.
Meanwhile, the much‑touted Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE—quietly shut its doors with months left on its charter, having produced few, if any, measurable savings. The grand promise to "slash waste" turned out to be another branding exercise, not a governing achievement.
A Pattern of Performative Austerity
As someone who has voted for Republicans in the past precisely because they claimed to care about the national debt, I find this performative austerity alarming and disappointing. But the pattern is now familiar. When Democrats hold power, Republicans brand themselves as the party of fiscal rectitude, denouncing every spending bill and every increase in the debt ceiling. When they regain control, they push through deficit‑financed tax cuts, expand favored programs, and shy away from any politically painful reforms to the big drivers of long‑term spending.
This is not conservatism. It is opportunism.
What Real Fiscal Conservatism Requires
Real fiscal conservatism would start by leveling with the public: we cannot keep promising ever‑expanding benefits, ever‑lower taxes, and ever‑higher defense budgets without paying for them. It would insist that any new tax cuts or new spending be fully offset. It would put entitlement reform, tax reform, and defense priorities on the table at the same time, rather than pretending that the problem can be solved by cutting “waste” in domestic programs alone.
A Credibility Lost
Republican leaders have chosen a different path. Faced with a historic opportunity—unified control of government at a moment of growing fiscal strain—they chose to double down on the very policies that worsened the imbalance. They passed a megabill that expands the deficit, presided over a shutdown that damaged the economy without shrinking government, and then declared victory.
They have lost the right to be taken seriously on the deficit.
Voters who genuinely care about fiscal responsibility should stop giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt on this issue. The record of the past half‑century was already damning; the record of 2025 should remove any remaining illusions. The party that once campaigned against "Democratic runaway spending" has had its chance to govern. The deficit is still growing, the government is still large, and the long‑term outlook is still dire—largely because of choices they themselves made.
At some point, rhetoric and reality have to meet. On fiscal responsibility, that day has come. Republicans have forfeited their credibility. It is time for the rest of us to stop pretending otherwise.