CeleryKills

When Steve Miller said the national debt is “due to people who don’t belong here,” my first reaction is to pause, sip my coffee, and ask a very Pacific Northwest question: which people, exactly, and by what math? Because if we are going to talk about belonging, we should probably start with receipts. Debt is not a vibe. It is a ledger.

If we follow that ledger honestly, two entries jump off the page. The first is a series of massive tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and corporations while permanently reducing federal revenue. Multiple analyses show that the Bush and Trump tax cuts account for a majority of the growth in the debt since 2001, adding roughly $10 trillion on their own once interest is included (Center for American Progress, Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible, 2023; CBO, H.R. 1 Cost Estimate, 2017). I remember being told these cuts would pay for themselves. I also remember being told the Iraq war would be quick, cheap, and greeted with flowers. Only one of those promises failed harder than the other.

Which brings us to the second entry: a war launched without legal authorization, justified by false claims, and financed almost entirely through borrowing. The long‑term cost of the Iraq war is now estimated in the multiple trillions, once veterans’ care and interest are counted, and those costs continue to accrue decades later (Crawford, Blood and Treasure, 2023; Bilmes and Stiglitz, True Cost of the Iraq War, 2010). That debt did not arrive at the border on foot. It was signed into law, funded on credit, and waved through with applause.

Here is where the “don’t belong here” framing gets unintentionally interesting. If belonging means contributing more than you take, immigrants fail spectacularly as villains. Comprehensive budget analyses show that immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, have reduced U.S. deficits over the past thirty years by paying more in taxes than they receive in benefits (Bier et al., Immigrants’ Fiscal Effects, 2025; CBO, Effects of the Immigration Surge, 2024). So, if fiscal responsibility is the test of belonging, the numbers point somewhere else entirely.

So maybe the question is not who crossed the wrong border, but who crossed the line between governance and indulgence. Who cut taxes without paying for them. Who started wars without budgeting for the aftermath. Who treated the national credit card like a moral entitlement. If debt is the evidence, then perhaps the people who do not belong here are not the ones picking fruit or paying payroll taxes, but the ones who mistook ideology, petulance, or apocalyptic fantasy for fiscal policy. What would it look like to recognize that and act accordingly?

References

• Bier, David J., Michael Howard, Julián Salazar. Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023. Cato Institute, 2025.
• Congressional Budget Office. H.R. 1, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Cost Estimate. 2017.
• Congressional Budget Office. Effects of the Immigration Surge on the Federal Budget and the Economy. 2024.
• Crawford, Neta C. Blood and Treasure: United States Budgetary Costs and Human Costs of 20 Years of War in Iraq and Syria. Brown University Costs of War Project, 2023.
• Center for American Progress. Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio. 2023.
• Stiglitz, Joseph E., Linda J. Bilmes. The True Cost of the Iraq War. Harvard Kennedy School, 2010.
• Anthony Orrico, “Stephen Miller: ‘People Who Don’t Belong Here’ Are Responsible For National Debt,” Yahoo News / HuffPost, March 16, 2026.
  https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/stephen-miller-people-don-t-040806862.html
• MSN syndication of the same report, March 17, 2026.
  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/stephen-miller-people-who-dont-belong-here-are-responsible-for-national-debt/ar-AA1YN0Ox
• Video clip and transcript excerpt circulated by journalist Aaron Rupar on X (formerly Twitter), March 16, 2026, showing Miller making the statement verbatim during the event.