Republicans run up the debt more than the Democrats. If you care about balancing budgets or spending "conservatively," this is something to know.
See this new article: Trump ran up national debt twice as much as Biden: new analysis, Neil Irwin, Axios, June 24, 2024
Also: "Inflation will soar once again if former President Donald Trump wins back the White House, a group of 16 Nobel prize-winning economists have predicted in a letter obtained by Axios. ... The letter was signed by Joseph Stiglitz, George A. Akerlof, Sir Angus Deaton, Claudia Goldin, Sir Oliver Hart, Eric S. Maskin, Daniel L. McFadden, Paul R. Milgrom, Roger B. Myerson, Edmund S. Phelps, Paul M. Romer, Alvin E. Roth, William F. Sharpe, Robert J. Shiller, Christopher A. Sims and Robert B. Wilson, per Axios." (HuffPost, June 25, 2024)
See my essay on the book It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump by Stuart Stevens
Rather than eliminating the national debt as Trump promised, his administration is increasing the national debt by $1 trillion each year.
As a candidate, Trump falsely promised that he would eliminate the entire national debt in 8 years. Instead, he's blown up annual deficits and is adding roughly a trillion dollars to the national debt each year he is in office. https://t.co/yCXgWtvYeL
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) March 11, 2019
A November 2018 article in Forbes said that the deficit increase was "largely driven by increased spending in Medicare (up $28 billion) and defense ($9 billion)." It is also increasing because of the historic tax cuts that the Republicans passed in late 2017. The tax cuts mainly benefit corporations, which are no longer paying the amount of taxes that they used to. The Congressional Budget Office said that debt could reach $29 trillion (nearly equal to GDP) by 2028. The CBO's 2018 year-end report said that this would mean that debt would be "about twice as high in relation to GDP as it is this year — which would be a higher ratio than the United States has ever recorded." Meanwhile, Trump's proposed budget would cut Department of Education funding by $7.1 billion and would slash the EPA budget by about one-third. He is also asking for $8.6 billion to build a U.S-Mexico border wall, which is separate from the $8.1 billion to which he would already have access from declaring a "national emergency" at the border.
Presidents usually aspire to balance the budget within 10 years. The Trump administration projects that Trump's plan would take 15 years. In March 2019, he "proposed a record $4.7 trillion federal budget...relying on optimistic 3.1 percent economic growth projections alongside accounting shuffles and steep domestic cuts."
Update:
"On February 2, [2024,] for example, General Electric (GE) reported about $7 billion in profits for 2023. GE CEO and Chairman H. Lawrence Culp Jr. was effusive. 'In 2023, our teams delivered an excellent year, more than tripling earnings and generating almost 70 percent more free cash flow,' Culp said in a statement. Culp noted the company was able to fatten the pockets of its shareholders by spending $7 billion on 'dividends, buybacks, and retiring our preferred equity.'
You might expect that, with such a profitable year, GE sent a giant check to the federal government. Instead, GE received a refund of $423 million."
— "You paid more in income taxes last year than a corporation with billions in profits," Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information, February 13, 2024
Should Trump win a second term, his advisors are prepared to lower the corporate tax rate to 15% or even 14%.
When Trump says he hopes the economy crashes in the next year, we should take him seriously, but not literally. LITERALLY what he means is he’s going to cajole and threaten people with influence over the economy to sabotage it.
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) Jan 10, 2024 at 13:23
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It might be impossible to ask an executive editor of the New York Times to do any introspection but if you're so sworn to strictly objectively look at nothing but solid facts about the outside world why is an economy with rapid growth and generationally low unemployment "favorable to Trump"?
— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca.bsky.social) May 5, 2024 at 20:30
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I'm old enough to remember when Donald Trump pledged in 2016 that he would pay off the national debt within 8 years. Not balance the budget, mind you, but pay off the national debt.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) October 9, 2025 at 8:43 AM
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