Which would be worse?

[A] Doubling the size of the deficit with public spending cut in half, or [B] balancing the budget with the level of the deficit doubled in size from where it presently is.

Neither would be great, but for me A would be vastly preferable to B.

There is no way one could ever find out since no economic model could be trusted to give an accurate model. But on this score, my guess would be that most modern macro models would show B preferable to A.