The age of big-spending Republicans is here 

It may be hard for the Gen Z crowd to accept, but there was a time when Republicans in Congress believed in fiscal responsibility — restraining government spending and working to limit federal debt. Sadly, all most Gen Zers have ever known is big-spending Republicans.

Within their short lifespans, Gen Zers have seen the annual federal deficit — the amount of money the federal government spends more than its revenue in any given year — grow from $.44 trillion in 2015 to $1.78 trillion in 2025. And the U.S. Treasury says the federal deficit for fiscal 2026, which ends Sept. 30, has risen from its initial projection of $1.8 trillion to $2.17 trillion with six weeks to go.

Today, the federal debt — the accumulated amount of yearly federal deficits — is $39.9 trillion, double what it was only 10 years ago. Democrats have long been proponents of a big-spending government. Most Republicans have now joined their ranks. 

It wasn’t always that way. A Republican-controlled House and Senate was able to achieve a small budget surplus from 1998 to 2001, when Democrat Bill Clinton was president. 

During the Obama presidency, Republicans retook control of the House of Representatives in 2011 and the Senate in 2015. They forced spending reductions, and the annual federal deficit declined for four years in a row, from $1.3 trillion in 2011 to $440 billion in 2015.

A Gen Zer might reasonably ask what happened between 2011 and 2015, when the federal deficit steadily declined? 

In 2011, the........

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