Sigh: Red Ink Is Bipartisan
President Trump, with “help” from Congress, is delivering the exact opposite of one 2016 campaign promise: his vow to fully pay off the then-$19 trillion national debt.
The budget Trump rolled out this month doesn’t envision anything close to zero debt by 2025, the year by which he promised to have wiped it out. Nor does it reduce the debt — or even slow its growth.
Instead, Trump’s new tax-and-spend plan puts him on pace to add more to US debt than his predecessor, Barack Obama — the biggest presidential borrower in US history, who racked up some $8.6 trillion in IOUs.
America’s red ink topped the $22 trillion mark last month; under Trump’s plan, it swells to $29 trillion by 2029. And it’ll wind up higher still if the economy doesn’t grow as fast or if Congress adds spending.
Not that any of Trump’s recent predecessors were much better: Before Obama, George W. Bush doubled the debt, with $5.8 trillion in total yearly deficits. Bill Clinton racked up $1.4 trillion, despite the huge cost savings from the end of the Cold War and budget surpluses in his second term.
Credit George H.W. Bush with $1.6 trillion in new bills in his four years. Ronald Reagan at least took eight years to drive up the nut by $1.9 trillion.
Washington increasingly seems to buy Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney’s recent assertion that “nobody cares” about monster deficits and an out-of-control national debt.
Yet it matters. Sure, with interest rates near zero, interest on the debt may be low. But a growing debt still eats up an ever-larger part of the budget. And with rates rising, interest on the debt is now projected to outstrip defense spending by 2024.
Let’s face it: Neither Republicans nor Democrats can offer any reasonable justification for spending more than they take in, absent a huge war or economic crisis. And America today faces no such war, while the economy’s booming.
No, it isn’t easy to get Washington to roll back spending or raise taxes in order to cut deficits down to size. But trillion-dollar annual budgets are sure to come back to haunt us. Today’s pols will own that.