Tax cuts and pandemic relief measures enacted during the Trump administration added $8.4 trillion to the national debt over the 10-year budget window, according to a study released Wednesday by a top budget watchdog group.
Discretionary spending increases from 2018 and 2019 added $2.1 trillion, Trump’s signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act added $1.9 trillion and the 2020 bipartisan CARES Act for pandemic relief added another $1.9 trillion, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a Washington think tank, found in a study released earlier this month.
“Of the $8.4 trillion President Trump added to the debt, $3.6 trillion came from COVID relief laws and executive orders, $2.5 trillion from tax cut laws, and $2.3 trillion from spending increases, with the remaining executive orders having costs and savings that largely offset each other,” budget experts with the CRFB wrote in a summary of the report.
The only significant deficit reduction enacted by the Trump administration noted in the report was due to tariffs levied on a variety of imported goods, which are calculated to have brought in $445 billion over 10 years.
For the record, government debt isn’t bad. What is bad, is how that debt is used. If you use it to fund productivity boosting infrastructure projects, then it pays for itself. If you use it to invest in successful companies in return for shares then it pays for itself… unlike when Tesla got a $400 million gov. loan and gave nothing in return - which meant tax payers had to take the hit when Solyndra (which got money from the same scheme) bankrupted itself into the toilet, tax payers took all the risk and got shafted both when a company failed and when one succeeded.
The Norwegian government, for example, owns 30% of the domestic stock market. One of many strategies the US government should probably be looking to if they want a healthier way to invest in companies.
Using debt to back tax cuts on the other hand, like Trump did according to this article, is an awful strategy.
I’d say adding 8.4 trillion to the debt is pretty freaking awful. That’s 24% of today’s national debt.
You clearly either didn’t read or didn’t understand the comment you’re replying to.
Let me dumb it down for you some more
A government incurring debt isn’t inherently bad. That’s a (hypocritical) conservative talking point.
A government incurring debt to pay for tax cuts for the rich like Trump did is extremely bad and stupid.
A government incurring debt isn’t inherently bad, but I have a hard time imagining a sustainable and effective way to rake up an 8.4 trillion debt in four years.
You clearly didn’t catch my point either.
Trump added 8.4 trillion to the debt- which is 24% of the current national debt.
While I’m not arguing that debt is necessarily bad…. that much added debt is bad.
Tax payers took no risk, taking risk implies having an option. Tax payers were forcibly handed the debt burden with no vote. American citizens are the ones who pay the price of the failures of the wealthy. American workers who keep our society functioning are robbed on a daily basis, we should have never taxed income.
which meant tax payers had to take the hit when Solyndra (which got money from the same scheme) bankrupted itself into the toilet, tax payers took all the risk and got shafted both when a company failed and when one succeeded.
The loan program that gave money to solyndra had like a 2% default rate. For anyone concerned about climate and switching to green energy, it was a big success. Implying it was some big failure based on what appears to be a well calculated risk, is unfair and just pushing the propaganda spread by parties who don’t want the government to do anything to save the environment.
And half the country thinks we need four more years of this.
Because they don’t really care about the deficit.
They want to cut social programs and the deficit is their excuse.
If the deficit didn’t exist, they’d create a new excuse without blinking.
It’s a very important thing to remember when dealing with them:
They lie constantly and without remorse.
Like the whole “return to office”. They weren’t really mad about that, they just want to shrink the federal government. And return to office makes federal work less attractive.
However Biden thought they were being honest and he could score points forcing every federal agency to do a return to office for everyone…
He did that, and Republicans immediately stopped talking about. He pissed off every federal employee that isn’t maga and even those maga ones just immediately forgot about the issue.
RTO in the DC area is as much due to pressure from various local governments to “save downtown” as it is a top-down program from the Biden administration. From everything I’ve seen, the local governments care way more about this than the feds do and they’re getting pressure from businesses.
top-down program from the Biden administration.
That’s literally what it was…
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/04/politics/white-house-cabinet-in-person-work/index.html
And the vast majority of federal employees don’t live in DC…
Yes let’s focus on the national debt: famous winning issue for progressives.
Or is the goal to catch republicans on hypocrisy? I thought it was clear by now that the republican base literally doesn’t care so long as there is a hooting tooting demagogue that triggers Democrats in the White House.
You’re not changing anyone’s mind if they are in the base. This is information for swing voters who care about the debt.
Focus on something that actually matters, like healthcare, cost of living, police violence, reducing the military budget so there is money for schools or infrastructure. There are many issues that actually have an effect on peoples lives, national debt is not one of them. And if you focus on national debt republicans will actually win more votes because they are the issue owner.
Because I like having a stable country.
Do you like stability?
If we keep putting shit on debt rather than, you know, paying for it upfront, eventually the country will be drowned in debt and shit can’t be taken care of.
I also like the idea of not being cursed by my (proverbial…) grandkid’s kids
It’s funny the party that keeps threatening to destroy the country over debt is the same party that doesn’t think twice when increasing the deficit.
He is still going on about tariffs and here he only made back $45B/year in deficit savings from it. What a dumb shit.
If I remember the articles being written at the time, his tariffs hurt American farmers by causing China to buy from other countries. He then used stipends to make up the difference to them so they weren’t out the money. The result is, he damaged our trade position, used taxes to cover it up, and American Farmers still love him and don’t understand they were receiving the dreaded “Guvment Handouts”.
