Former Treasury officials slam MAGA's path to fiscal destruction in scathing op-ed

Former treasury secretaries Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers called out the lie in President Donald Trump’s vow “to restore fiscal sanity to our nation.”

Rubin and Summers say the administration they served and the Trump administration both face the same serious fiscal problems and an economy rapidly changing under new technology.

“In that earlier era, we followed a strategy of hoping for the best, while planning conservatively,” they tell the New York Times. “We paired policies that reduced the deficit with others that stimulated investment. That set off a virtuous economic cycle of growth, deficit reduction, lower interest rates and thus more investment and growth. Fiscal responsibility helped contain inflation because it was accompanied by respect for the independence of the Federal Reserve and recognition of the importance of a strong dollar.”

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But that’s not what Trump is doing, they say. The current president undermines the Federal Reserve, imposes tariffs and passes a tax and policy bill “that is more budget busting than big and beautiful.”

“The country’s debt is the same size as its entire economic output, and if this legislative package passes, it could grow to 135 percent or more, with an annual budget deficit equaling 8 percent of gross domestic product, by 2035,” they write. An unsustainable fiscal trajectory like that has consequences, including higher interest rates and capital costs, reduced business confidence and the crowding out of private investment.

Where the Clinton administration approached the budget process with openness and “an emphasis on facts and analysis,” Trump goes with “chaos and a lack of discipline.” DOGE may have promised to find $2 trillion in savings, but they actually cost the nation hundreds of billions over the next decade by gutting the IRS, the nation’s means of revenue generation. Clinton relied on scoring from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, while Trump uses “budgetary maneuvers” and “magical thinking.”

Finally, they say Clinton would have seriously considered tax increases to avoid busting the budget, unlike Trump’s budget bill that barely survived the Senate yesterday.

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“What we need to do is reverse that trend so that the ratio of our debt to our economy falls, rather than rises,” they warn. “Unfortunately, this legislation does the opposite. A responsible Congress would reject it.”

Read the full New York Times report at this link.