Republican rivals criticize Trump over federal spending and debt.
GOP Rivals Criticize Trump’s Failure to Reduce National Debt
During a town hall event in New Hampshire last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) lambasted his chief rival in the Republican presidential primary race, former President Donald Trump, for his failure to “drain the swamp” and reduce the national debt. “He actually said he was going to eliminate the national debt. He added $8 trillion to the debt,” DeSantis said during the event.
Trump’s old running mate now turned rival, former Vice President Mike Pence, told NBC News in May that Trump “could have done a better job” on controlling federal spending.
Debt Concerns Among GOP Hopefuls
In March, another Trump rival, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, wrote in a USA Today op-ed that “Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for America’s spending crisis. They have both supported multitrillion dollar deficits that have brought us to a $31.6 trillion national debt and counting.”
Although Trump remains the undisputed front-runner to become the GOP’s next standard-bearer, his rivals are looking at several issues that may peel away the former president’s hold on the primary race, including his part in raising the nation’s federal debt.
At the end of fiscal 2016, the nation’s total debt hit $19.5 trillion, according to the Associated Press. At the end of fiscal 2020, when Trump was leaving the White House, the nation’s debt increased to $26.9 trillion, a $7.4 trillion increase. Another 2021 report from ProPublica said that under Trump, the nation’s debt increased by $7.8 trillion, which is almost more than double the total costs of what Americans owe on student loans, car loans, credit cards, and every other type of debt other than mortgages, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Two factors that contributed to debt under Trump were the coronavirus pandemic, which saw Congress disburse trillions of dollars to help struggling families, businesses, and healthcare facilities stay afloat, and Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that the tax cuts could cost over $1.8 trillion for the 2018-2028 period, including interest. If several individual tax provisions are extended beyond 2025, the total cost could balloon to $3 trillion.
It’s not just Trump’s 2024 rivals who have slammed his federal debt record — other conservative leaders have criticized Trump as well. “Why is core inflation so high? It’s simply undeniable that the insane spending baseline that was built under Trump even before COVID and then blew to the sky with the failed COVID policies is the cake onto which Biden added the icing,” wrote Daniel Horowitz in The Blaze.
Yet some Republican strategists cautioned that although the federal debt did increase under Trump, it may not matter with GOP primary voters, who currently support Trump over all other rivals.
“I do think the debt matters to voters, but I remember when Democrats attacked Ronald Reagan over the national debt. Republicans attacked Obama over the national debt,” Brian Kirwin, a veteran Virginia GOP consultant, told the Washington Examiner. ”Even in primaries, I don’t think it’s the silver bullet issue some would hope it was. If it was, the debt wouldn’t be $32 trillion.”
Similarly, Jason Roe, a GOP strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), said that federal spending isn’t an issue that resonates powerfully with voters.
“One of my great frustrations over the last decade is the complete abandonment of fiscal conservatism,” Roe said. “While I think it is a critically important issue to the future of the country, I don’t think voters are responding to it. And so I would say that this is the kind of attack that you can use on a laundry list of other attacks that undermine the Trump message. But I don’t think voters are going to make decisions based on that.”
Debt Concerns and Public Opinion
A June survey from the Pew Research Center showed that the American public rated inflation, healthcare affordability, the ability of politicians to work together across the aisle, drug addiction, and gun violence as the top problems facing the nation. The federal budget deficit ranked in seventh place on the list with 72% of Republicans saying it was a very big problem, while only 39% of Democrats said the same. Seven in 10 Americans expect the federal budget to increase over the next five years, according to the survey. The nation’s federal budget deficit stands at $1.39 trillion so far in fiscal 2023, according to the Treasury Department. The last time the U.S. had a federal surplus was in 2001.
Trump in his third bid for the White House announced in an Agenda47 campaign video that he would cut federal waste through the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 if he were reelected.
“For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as impoundment,” Trump said in a video released in June. “Very simply, this meant that if Congress provided more funding than was needed to run the government, the president could refuse to waste the extra funds, and instead return the money to the general treasury and maybe even lower your taxes, although we did give you the biggest tax reduction in history, and the biggest regulation reduction in history, two things I am very proud of.
“When I return to the White House, I will do everything I can to challenge the Impoundment Control Act in court, and if necessary, get Congress to overturn it,” Trump added. “We will overturn it. I will then use the president’s long-recognized impoundment power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings. This will be in the form of tax reductions for you. This will help quickly to stop inflation and slash the deficit.”
As the U.S. approaches $33 trillion in national debt, the economy is likely to be a topic of some importance during the first GOP primary debate later this month. But with Trump suggesting he will skip the event, he may not be able to defend against attacks on his fiscal record.
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