"Taxing the rich and spending government funds on infrastructure and government programs like Medicaid, even at the expense of the national debt, is both widely and wildly popular."

The federal government, specifically Congress, is, and always has been, the monopoly issuer of our nation's currency. This ability was held in check during our "gold standard" nonsense by the usual suspects of oligarchs and their bankers, but that didn't alter our Constitution or the self funding nature of our currency and the mandate placed on Congress to create it for "the common welfare".

The concept that Congress must extract its own currency from the private sector to enable its spending is almost as laughable as it being forced into debt, payable by the private sector, for any spending it deems appropriate. Where would this currency originate from, and how would it survive paying down the "debt" to be then able to be spent again for our present needs?

There is no "debt" that the private sector is responsible to pay back, just as there is no level of spending that is "unaffordable" to our federal government as long as the real resources and labor are available within the economy to deploy to the task at hand. This makes "ANY" misery that can be mitigated with dollars entirely a "POLITICAL" decision, not economics. I would not want to be a conventional economist or a politician preaching "fiscal conservatism" should the populace have a sudden econ epiphany.