The final numbers are in: Trump was a disaster as he added more to the national debt than Bush and Obama
Donald Trump’s final tab is in. Legislation and executive actions signed by former President Trump added $7.8 trillion in ten-year budget deficits. When accounting for non-legislative budget savings, the total projected budget deficits expanded by $3.9 trillion over the decade.
It begins with the ten-year (2017-2027) budget baseline that Trump inherited in January 2017, and then measures all subsequent changes to those ten-year estimates that occurred during his presidency. This includes aggregating every line-item of every bill he signed, as well as the deficit shifts driven by economic changes and the Congressional Budget Office’s technical re-estimates of existing tax-and-spending policies.
Rather than just look at the deficit totals, this accounting method separates out the inherited deficit baseline from the actual policies that a president can control.
When President Trump was inaugurated, the CBO projected $10 trillion in deficits over the 2017-2027 decade. By the time Trump left office, CBO’s estimate had grown to $13.9 trillion.
Reducing deficits from the $10 trillion projection should have been easy. During Trump’s presidency, faster-than-expected economic growth raised the ten-year revenue projections by $1.3 trillion, and lower-than-expected interest rates shaved the ten-year interest cost projections by $2.6 trillion. That’s $3.9 trillion in automatic budget savings without lifting a finger.
Instead of building on those savings, the president helped enact $7.8 trillion in new initiatives, flipping his total fiscal imprint to a $3.9 trillion net cost. The largest drivers were pandemic-relief legislation ($3.9 trillion), the 2017 tax cuts ($2 trillion), and legislation raising the discretionary spending caps ($1.6 trillion). Other costs included disaster aid and other discretionary spending ($493 billion), repeal of several Affordable Care Act-related taxes ($299 billion), and hundreds of small policies ($201 billion).
On the savings side, the president’s tariffs saved $367 billion, and the repeal of the ACA’s individual mandate and independent payment review board saved $317 billion.
From a fiscal responsibility point of view, President Trump’s record compares poorly to his predecessors.
Using the same methodology, former President Barack Obama added $5 trillion in legislative costs over a decade, while former President George W. Bush added $6.9 trillion. Not only did Trump sign more ten-year debt into law than his immediate predecessors, he also did it in just a single four-year presidential term, compared to his predecessors’ eight years in the Oval Office.
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-added-more-to-the-national-debt-than-obama-and-bush