Don't over-generalise from the USA. There are plenty of democracies that run balanced budgets and thus don't have a deficit, or even run a surplus. For example,

Don't over-generalise from the USA. There are plenty of democracies that run balanced budgets and thus don't have a deficit, or even run a surplus. For example, Germany, Switzerland. The UK government has won the last three elections on a backdrop of "we're going to cut spending still further to try and balance the budget" and voters supported that. The USA is actually somewhat unusual amongst democracies in how little effort there truly is to reign in spending. The Republicans seem to have lost any ability to enact real policy. Only the Dems seem able to make major changes to US society and it's always in the direction of more spending. When the Reps get in, they seem too weak, too divided and too beholden to the military to pass any real spending cuts.