Georgia Senate debate trades substance for partisan fairy tales
By Dana Whitfield · Reporting from Washington ·
Jon Ossoff and Mike Collins clashed over old federal policies on a debate stage, offering voters a false choice between exhausted economic fantasies.
The federal deficit ledger exposes both campaigns
Voters tuning into the first debate between Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff and Republican challenger Representative Mike Collins on Thursday night, hosted by WANF-TV of Atlanta, heard plenty of theater and precious little arithmetic. The Washington Post and NBC News reported that Collins blamed "Bidenomics" and the "Green New Deal" for inflation. He offered the "One Big Beautiful Bill" with no taxes on tips and Social Security, a measure adding $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit. Ossoff, who leads Collins by 10 percentage points in a YouGov poll, fired back against Trump-era tariffs. Both campaigns are selling fairy tales.
Collins insists that sweeping tax cuts automatically pay for themselves. He claims tariffs making things "fair" with China magically protect the Savannah port and Brunswick port without raising costs for Georgians. This ignores how trade levies act as a regressive tax on domestic consumers. Ossoff raised funds including $50 million from small-dollar donors, while Collins received a $25 million boost from the Senate Leadership Fund. Yet Ossoff wants voters to forget his 97 percent voting alignment with Joe Biden. When Collins points out that federal spending fueled post-pandemic inflation, he points to a real ledger entry. When Ossoff ignores that his party's spending bills lacked fiscal guardrails, he practices the exact brand of evasion that the 1992 United States presidential election challenged.
When foreign policy replaces the ledger
The debate quickly spiraled away from kitchen-table economics into high-stakes foreign policy and cultural warfare. The Jerusalem Post and NBC News detailed how Ossoff criticized the ongoing Iran war. Collins defended Trump's bombing raids with Israel against Iran in February by asserting the president had every right to ensure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.
On the Middle East, Ossoff stated that Israeli forces prosecuting the war in Gaza violated the law of conflict and international humanitarian law. He defended his vote to block an arms shipment and his opposition to a $2.8 billion weapons package. Collins countered by accusing Ossoff of endorsing Abdul El-Sayed, claiming he hates Israel and loves Iran.
The personal attacks grew even sharper. Ossoff accused Collins of being associated with neo-Nazi propaganda disseminated from his house. Collins pushed back by noting he has condemned racism and antisemitism, while attacking Ossoff for accepting campaign donations from billionaire Reid Hoffman. This is not governance. It is a spectacle designed to drown out the fact that neither candidate has a credible plan to balance the federal budget.
The institutional failure of the modern ballot
We have arrived at a strange place when a Senate debate in a swing state spends more time litigating election conspiracy theories than fixing the balance sheet. Collins defended election security and criticized Ossoff's opposition to the SAVE Act. He assured voters that "we live in the best country in the world, and no reason we should not have the most secure elections in the world." Ossoff responded that Collins and Donald Trump remain obsessed with overturning the 2020 election. He noted that Collins inherited a seat in Congress despite calling himself a trucker.
This brings us straight back to the institutional rot of the January 6 Capitol attack. There, magical thinking assaulted the peaceful transfer of power. Democrats are hardly guiltless, having spent trillions of dollars in discretionary funding without a plan to offset long-term debt. Both parties rely on tribal grievance to keep voters from examining the bottom line.
Georgians deserve a senator who understands that fiscal solvency is a national security issue, not a partisan talking point. Voters should reject both Collins's deficit-busting tax cuts and Ossoff's refusal to reckon with his inflationary record. They should split their tickets to demand institutional competence.