Faced with soaring deficits, an aging population, a teetering pension system, unsustainable health-care obligations, $1 trillion in annual interest costs, rising long-term bond yields and net public debt at around 100% of gross domestic product, what’s a country to do?

For the 119th Congress, the answer has been simple: Tax less and borrow more. As Republican leaders ponder yet another party-line spending bill — expected to include at least $95 billion in new outlays with no offsetting revenue — they might reflect for a moment on America’s budgetary crisis in the making.

Over less than two years, this Congress has worsened the nation’s fiscal trajectory dramatically. Its main accomplishment, last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will by itself increase deficit spending by at least $4.1 trillion from 2025 to 2034. Add another $1 trillion or so once many of the law’s “temporary” tax cuts are inevitably extended, and the US will soon be looking at annual deficits approaching $3 trillion and a........

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