Key GOP talking-point on the economy annihilated by new analysis

24 June 2024

Many GOP allies of former President Donald Trump have attacked President Joe Biden aggressively over the United States' federal deficit. And Democratic strategists, in response, have accused them of hypocrisy and stressed that Republicans never complained about the deficit when Trump was in office.

According to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) released on June 24, Trump did more to increase the deficit than Biden.

Axios' Neil Irwin reports, "Both candidates bear a share of the responsibility, as each added trillions to that tally while in office. But Trump's contribution was significantly higher, according to the fiscal watchdogs at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, thanks to both tax cuts and spending deals struck in his four years in the White House."

Irwin notes that Trump, according to CRFB's research, "added $8.4 trillion in borrowing over a ten-year window" and increased the federal deficit "by about twice as much as President Biden."

"If you exclude COVID relief spending from the tally," Irwin explains, "the numbers are $4.8 trillion for Trump and $2.2 trillion for Biden…. For Trump, the biggest non-COVID drivers of higher public debt were his signature tax cuts enacted in 2017 — causing $1.9 trillion in additional borrowing — and bipartisan spending packages, which added $2.1 trillion."

CRFB President Maya MacGuineas discussed the study's findings with Axios.

MacGuineas told the publication, "The next president will face huge fiscal challenges. Yet both candidates have track records of approving trillions in new borrowing even setting aside the justified borrowing for COVID, and neither has proposed a comprehensive and credible plan to get the debt under control."

The CRFB president added, "No president is fully responsible for the fiscal challenges that come along, but they need to use the bully pulpit to set the stage for making some hard choices."

Read Neil Irwin's full Axios article at this link.

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