I'm not sure anyone's been "cooking the books" on inflation. There's ample open source data. Would be pretty hard to cover it up, even if the government isn't releasing their own figures.

That being said, they can distort things like unemployment figures by discounting under employment or people who have given up searching.

As for fiscal irresponsibility, both parties are guilty. But at the same time, of the two parties, the Democrats are more fiscally responsible. It's a tired myth that this is not the case but Republicans are a "cut taxes and spend" party. And usually the way they spend is giving more money to the rich while shifting cost burdens to the working class. But since the USD is the global reserve currency, it's actually impossible for the US to not rack up debt.

That being said, debt isn't actually the real problem. The problem is under investment in industries that actually lead to future growth and enable prosperity in the 65th percentile, as opposed to a system that just allows rich people to siphon money from the economy and then tax shelter it. Which is our current system. But I use the term "industries" loosely. I'm not talking about kickbacks for corporations. I'm talking about we need subsidized healthcare and education; we need to invest in more efficient, resilient, and sustainable infrastructure; we need to invest in the industries of the future rather than continuing to subsidize the industries of yesterday.

The US does have a problem of a two party duopoly. And both parties are just the capitalist party, where the Democrats are the moderate wing and the Republicans are the far right wing. Democrats are not a left wing party, nor do they serve the interests of the working class. It's neither through incompetence or indecision that they repeatedly fail to deliver necessary reforms that would actually help the bottom 90%. But then, that goes doubly so for the Republicans. We have to abolish the two party duopoly and get money out of politics. That would be a good start.