Lol. That's an irrational take you have there. Budgets set now affect years into the future, and the overall level of debt does matter because at some point the debt becomes unpayable.
No, pigeon is on-point with his statement. The U.S. prints it's own money, the U.S. is not excessively reliant on any foreign market to maintain itself. Many foreign markets do rely on the U.S. to maintain themselves. The debt cannot become unpayable as the U.S. prints it's own currency. As long as inflation outpaces the interest rate on national debt the U.S. is effectively making money by carrying debt.
I can't recall who it was but I once saw a very eloquent lecture online by an economist arguing that we should really boil down our view of this as follows:
economic production = (exports - imports) + government deficit spending.
The concept is that as long as we run a trade deficit we will need to run a federal government spending deficit or we're effectively exporting wealth in an amount equal to the export:import differential. As such it is preferable to continue deficit spending and increase the national debt versus a forced economic recession in a pointless attempt to maintain a balanced budget for a nation that can literally print it's own money.
The U.S.' debt is, in fact, an economic driver for the country as most U.S. treasury bonds are held by individuals, a plurality of which are held by U.S. citizens. This gives ultra-low risk investment options for people nearing retirement or wealthy enough to play it safe while also giving the federal government liquidity that doesn't chain it to the latest tax policy that is in vogue or the vagaries of a potentially tumultuous economy.
This is where Trump's "just declare bankruptcy and negotiate" statement falls apart. U.S. bonds are supposed to be the safest investment in the world. Once they're brought into doubt all other investments are inherently more dubious. You also can't negotiate when you can print your own currency, all that does is devalue the currency and lead to massive cost inflation.
Moderate deficit spending at the top is a good thing for the U.S.. A net positive on exports would be better, sure, but we're a long ways from getting back to that standard and it would require the American people to have a better head on their shoulders about how where their money actually goes after they spend it. Excessive deficits is not good as it brings inflation on it's own. Excessive deficits to pay for foreign intervention is especially bad as it breaks the system, effectively borrowing more money to export more wealth, increasing the budget deficit and the trade deficit simultaneously.
We need to move towards a national alignment where states and municipalities are required to maintain a year to year balanced budget but the federal government is not, and the federal government is the backstop on state and municipal failure. This would prevent short term overspending by states hoping on pie in the sky economic turnarounds but also allow the federal government to step in quickly in the case of a major incident (like a hurricane, earthquake, etc.).
