The title paragraph of this article says it all --- Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It’ll Weigh Down the Economy for Years https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump Digging into the article a little further with root cause and effect. One of President Donald Trump’s lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt. The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in office.
Quite trying to twist the statistics in order to tell falsehoods. Trumps deficits average $1,048T. His final year in office we had the largest deficit in history due to COVID ($4.226). The cost of COVID was $3.238T. Meaning without COVID Trumps deficits amount to $4.133T. Even if you include COVID Trump STILL will have lower deficits than both Obama and Biden in any of their terms. If you include COVID (which is why Dems love to use the COVID year for comparison) then you would certainly in all fairness have to add the $878B paid back during Obama's first year in office to Bush in 2008. This would dramatically increase Obama's deficits and reduce Bush's deficit. Your attempts to skew and cherry-pick statistics is a failure. No one buys it. Everyone knows the Dems are the party of spending like drunken sailors. At least you suddenly seem aware deficits and spending matter. It is a start. Good job for waking up to the realization we need to stop spending more than we take in.
Baisicily bull ****. Trump never ran a trillion dollar deficit until the spending for COVID. Biden had never run a deficit LWSS than a trillion. Clever spin to attack national debt which accumulates billions in interest and which the president has little control. When in trouble, lie, eh?
It's a clever spin for you to switch to deficit. Of course deficits are very difficult to bring down, especially with all the debt interest. Since you insist on deficit talk, you notice from the chart below that, after the GW Bush worse recession since the Great Depression, that Obama/Biden started reducing deficits up until 2016. Trump gets in - increased deficits every year. Mismanaged COVID crisis with denial and delayed response made COVID much worse than it should have been. Once Biden managed that crisis, he brought deficit down. Should he do more - yes, and I hope he does in his 2nd term. America's finances cannot handle another 4 years of mismanagement by Trump.
In my opinion, it could be said that Trump was pushed and "forced" (so to speak) by the Democrats to spend all that money. I think Trump fully knew and realized that more excessive spending would be bad for the country. However, if Trump held fast and resisted increases in spending levels, the Democrats would have refused to pass a budget, shut down the government, and blamed Trump and Republicans for that. They would have accused Trump of trying to sabotage the economy, and would have told voters Trump was the reason they were suffering and not getting handouts of money ("Covid relief"). And then after Trump was gone and replaced with Biden, they would have immediately spent just as much money as they wanted Trump to spend, only a lot more of it would have gone to special progressive causes and been misspent. (Just look at the ridiculous places where money went under the very dishonestly named "Inflation Reduction Act" and "Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill" that happened under Biden) Spending levels were only down during the first part of Biden's term because of the massive spending during the last part of Trump's term. (I think Democrats wanted to be able to brag - at least temporarily - that they were spending less money than Trump) But had that not happened, the Democrats would not have paused spending, and would have immediately started spending, to make up for the lack of spending under Trump. We have only to look at what's been happening during the latter part of Biden's term to see what Democrats would have immediately done had Trump not approved or gone along with that high spending. So far, with the total average spending under the Biden Administration, the government is already on track to spend more than what was spent during the Trump Administration. (for exact numbers, see this thread: The growth of the debt under Biden compared to Trump , skip down to post #19 in that thread, which provides an update that Biden's rate of spending exceeded Trump's) No doubt Trump fully knew that by spending money he had a chance of winning the upcoming election (at the time) and preventing the Democrats from spending even more money. (It was a good chance, but turned out not to be) Had he not spent that money, no doubt the Democrats would have immediately compensated for the lack of spending and started spending like crazy immediately as soon as he was gone. In other words, even if Trump had blocked the spending (and been able to block it), it likely would not have ended up making a huge difference looking out on a 4 year span of time. The Democrats would have made sure that money was spent one way or the other, and would have still spent it (albeit just with a year or two time delay) once Trump was out of office. The reason that Trump went along with spending so much money boils down to this: That's what the majority of voters wanted. Or rather, that's what the media had convinced voters to want.
Hard to know where to start on all of these claims. Let's start here - Republicans have been ascribing to the 2 Santa Claus theory since the late '70s. This article explains it well: https://www.salon.com/2018/02/12/th...c-to-con-america-for-nearly-40-years_partner/ First, when Republicans control the federal government, and particularly the White House, spend money like a drunken sailor and run up the US debt as far and as fast as possible. This produces three results – it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy, it raises the debt dramatically, and it makes people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Claus.” Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!” This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus. It's important to start here, because you said that Trump didn't want to increase debt. I disagree, not just for Trump, but for Reagan and GW Bush too (not as much for GH Bush). So we will disagree on intent. I looked at your other thread, and I think it's incorrect to assume that Biden's debt will match his previous debt. Biden inherited the COVID crisis, which resulted in a huge deficit and a lot of debt in 2021. Those numbers are down substantially. I'm just amazed at the way you justify everything Trump did, when his performance was so pathetic.
Hey Now, let's not forget that, prior to COVID, when he realized that with even all the monetary supercharging the Rs did with ballooning the debt (unpaid tax cuts), it was still not working to get more that 2+% GDP growth, he was calling for and wanted the FED to give negative interest rates......boy oh boy, things really would have crashed if they had done that. Two months before COVID hit, Trump keeps pushing 'negative' interest rates. What would that mean for your wallet?
First of all, that's not really true. If you look at the statistics, since Bill Clinton, more money has been spent under every President than the President before them, regardless of whether they were Democrat or Republican. Bush spent more than Clinton. Obama spent more than Bush. Trump spent more than Obama. Biden is currently on track to spend more than Trump.
View attachment 244567 GW Bush inherited a budget surplus (2001 on chart), and started the US on the road to deficits every year. After their first 2 years of deficits associated with the GW Bush worst recession since the Great Depression (2009-2010), Obama reduced the deficit in 5 of his last 6 years. Trump increased deficits 4 out of 4 years.
So how many hundreds of billions of tax dollars has Biden given to Ukraine at this point? How many more is he going to give them?
The real question is whether and what the likelihood is the Biden Administration could have avoided the conflict in Ukraine if it had been more competent and had more diplomatic finesse. The whole Ukraine conflict is a very pointless war, if there ever was one.
Trump averaged $2.9trillion per year. Obama's 2nd term average was $500B, or about 6 times less than Trump. Even if you try o beautify Trumps numbers by excluding his worst year, his deficits were still almost twice as high as Obamas. Deficits shot up as soon as he assumed office and cut taxes and increased spending. And yes, GOP controlled both houses. No. Spending increased 20% in his 1st year in office. GOP Congress did it, as you may have heard.
That is not really true. You seem not to be aware of the underpinnings of the Ukraine conflict. Which is probably a separate discussion for another thread. The whole Ukraine conflict is almost like a new "Cold War", between the United States and Russia.
