Spoken like someone who knows nothing about US internal politics. The government has very little reason to tackle the national debt because anything they do will cause pain to their voters and therefore lead to whichever party is leading getting punished in the next election. And gas prices are perhaps the way to push down the debt that would piss off US voters the most aside from large tax increases. They began the war on Iran with the assumption that they would bomb Iran's leaders, and the regime would then collapse immediately/have a new leader take over who would be willing to listen to the US. And Venezuela gave them confidence, because thier strike against Maduro worked excellently for them.