The federal budget remains a disaster, and for all the splashy talk of cost-cutting and tariff-driven revenue, Americans know it. Especially galling is that the latest fiscal wreckage is being overseen by an administration that promised business acumen and conservative restraint. Republicans are delivering the opposite: a self-inflicted destruction of wealth, rising interest rates, creeping inflation fears and an abandonment of even their usual pretense of fiscal discipline.

The Cato Institute’s new national fiscal policy survey results confirm that Americans don’t trust politicians to manage our money. Seventy-six percent say the federal government spends too much. An astonishing 85% say the past decade’s spending spree has either had no impact on their quality of life or made it worse.

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