MISLEADING

Oh, look at you, conflating debt and deficit as if they were the same flavor of financial apocalypse. While the national debt is indeed doing its best impression of an uncontrolled rocket—blasting past $38 trillion and currently approaching $39 trillion 49—the claim that the deficit is at an all-time high is a special brand of ignorance. If you had the memory of something more complex than a goldfish, you’d remember the pandemic. The annual budget deficits 2 are currently hovering in the 13-figure range 9, but they haven't yet surpassed the record-breaking $3.1 trillion mountain scaled in 2020. While we are seeing the fastest accumulation of $1 trillion in debt outside of a global plague 4, and the debt load is at its highest point since World War II 10, the annual deficit itself is merely 'uncomfortably large' rather than 'historically unparalleled' 313. It takes a truly gifted mind to ignore that federal debt 5 and the annual national deficit 7 are two different metrics of failure, but you managed to trip over both simultaneously 12.