Republican fiscal hawks have every justification to be concerned about the federal government’s finances. Both the federal budget deficit and total federal debt held by the public are at all-time highs. For the first time ever, the federal government is spending more on interest payments to service its debt than it spends on national security. This is utterly undesirable, unreasonable, and unsustainable. 

The election of Donald Trump with a Republican-controlled House and Senate is a generational opportunity to rightsize spending and put the federal government on a more stable fiscal footing. However, unless the strategies employed by Republican hawks change — they are right in motive but wrong in tactics — the result will be more spending and higher deficits, the opposite of what they want to accomplish.