The POINT of saying “deficits don’t matter” is that policymakers should be asking “will this cause inflation?” instead of “are we spending too much?”

Budget planners should analyze use of resources, capacities, etc., instead of just looking at “scary” dollar amounts.

Stephanie Kelton, writing at her Substack, in We Need to Think Harder About Inflation, explains,

The MMT lens keeps us focused on the things that matter. It’s not the headline dollar figure—$1.9 or $3.5 trillion—or the budgetary impacts of that spending that warrant our attention. What matters is the economy’s capacity to safely absorb those dollars as they begin to flow into people’s pockets.