It makes no difference, because the promise was already made and now you have to choose between (a) destroying your government's credit rating or (b) making good on the promise. Complain all you want, but that's just the situation we find ourselves in.
In the short term, sure. In the longer term, when increased taxes and decreased services impact the average person, these promises will be renegotiated.
Because the government existed before you and will exist after you’re gone. It exists (in part) to enable continuity of society, and that is the compact you agree to by remaining a resident/citizen.
Promise, in this case, is a nicer version of the word debt. The government that made the promise is just an abstraction or buffer for the people making the promises, the people voting for them, and the people benefiting from those decisions. Note how current stakeholders (me and you) had no say on a decision that they would be (potentially) responsible for.
Thomas Jefferson's view of deficit finance was that one generation has no right to impose its debts on the next. He would have refused deficit spending that would not be completely paid back within 19 years (roughly, a generation).
I don't think many people listened to him on that. Here we are.
I think we do have the right to ask this question. We should have the option of denying that the previous generation ever had the right to impose this upon us.
At the very least, we should learn from this, recognize these types of short-sighted promises for what they are, and reject them when we see them. This is one big way we can be better than our forefathers.
