Also 3 is infeasible because the rich own congress and the poor are struggling really bad right now. You can’t cut the fat off someone skinny and we’ve spent the majority of 2025 cutting large chunks of muscle off to get a bit of fat. The only realistoc options to balance the budget are to cut military spending (including ice and police), or to start levyying massive taxes that will either impoverish the middle class or actually do a dent in the rich.

1 is somehow actually the worst option of the three though. The united states’ wealth comes in part because we always pay our debts. This is how we got here. Borrowing money is extremely low cost for us so we just do it constantly. It became politicized with the two santas strategy, but we rely on cheap debt to have the power to do things. If we default shit like high speed rail, a border wall, single payer health care, war with Venezuela, and even mythical non partisan expensive projects become financially impossible without taking on self destructive amounts of debt.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the administration understands any of that. Trump will print money, cut medicaid entirely, and demand we all go hungry for his vanity while he eats his newly hundred dollar big mac