Of course there are times when loans are great. However, through boom and bust cycles we have perpetually taken out loans.

So, you need to drill down, are the things we are spending on “capital improvements” for a better future or our operating expenses.

Interest? Military? Medicaid/care? Those will be expenses forever.

If you take anti cyclical view of it, when the stock market is at an all time high we should be paying debt, for when we need it later.

In order to prevent that, the budget must be cut. People must be fired. Promising projects must be discontinued. The question is where to make the cuts and how, because cuts in the wrong places in the wrong way will end up making the problem worse. For me, working in healthcare/science/research, I see the cuts to the NIH spending as a bad cut, because it sacrifices a lot of future revenue from scientific R&D. Same with cutting USAID and losing a ton of soft power that could be used to persuade developing countries to let in American companies. Or firing, say, IRS employees, since they're the ones who actually bring in the revenue. So there are good cuts and there are bad cuts, but the point is that eventually cuts must be made.