We mostly abandoned the long-term viability of that in the Bush years with the tax cuts plus expensive wars, and doubled down in Trump's first term (more tax cuts). That exhausted our margin for responsible emergency debt spending, and we had two crises on top of it (as always happens from time to time) so we were down to just playing for time and hoping for a way to spread out the pain rather than let it hit all at once.

We now do not appear to even be playing for time and are rushing toward the "all at once" thing.