The key point of contention is whether the government should pay any part of its debts by raising revenue, or solely by spending less.

Industrialized nations have almost always adopted a combination of the two to cut debt, according to an International Monetary Fund survey last year. The fund, which examined 30 instances dating to the 1980s, found that nations on average closed half the gap with tax increases and half with spending cuts.

Both approaches cause immediate economic pain, but the dominant school of economic theory predicts that tax increases should be somewhat less painful to the nation’s economy. A $100 spending cut reduces economic activity by $100, while an equivalent tax hike will be paid partly from savings, so that spending is reduced by a smaller amount.

Recent studies, however, have found the opposite: Countries that rely primarily on spending cuts tend to experience less economic pain in the short term. Moreover, in some cases, the cuts seem to spur faster growth.

The monetary fund study reported that a 1 percent fiscal consolidation achieved primarily through tax increases reduced economic activity by 1.3 percent over two years, while an identical consolidation driven primarily by spending cuts reduced activity by 0.3 percent.

“It’s coming to be accepted wisdom that it’s better to have spending cuts than tax increases,” said Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

As with most economic questions, however, there are no certain answers. Economists do not understand why rebounds happen. They are also not sure whether the economy of the United States, the world’s largest, would respond in the same way as the economies of smaller countries. One of the studies that found in favor of spending cuts says in its preface, “It is fair to say that we know relatively little about the effect of fiscal policy on growth.”