President Biden and former president Donald Trump have been mostly silent about the national debt on the campaign trail. As the national debt soars toward a new and worrisome record, neither President Biden nor former president Donald Trump are likely to bring the tide of red ink under control, experts say.
Not counting pandemic spending, Trump added $2.5 trillion more to the debt than Biden has, according to the CRFB report.“I think the question voters need to be asking is, who would prioritize getting the debt under control? And looking at the records of both candidates, nobody stands out as having been willing to make this an important priority so far,” said CRFB president Maya MacGuineas.
Within the next three years, the agency reported that the debt would exceed 106 percent of GDP, blowing past the previous record set in the aftermath of World War II.“I think this is a very dangerous situation for our country, and I’m not even a debt-phobiac,” said Stephen Moore, an economist at the right-wing Heritage Foundation and a Trump economic adviser. “I’ve done this for 40 years. That was the first one that really scared my pants off. There’s no bending of the curve down at all.
But the economy grew 1.6 percent on an annualized basis in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and hitting the rates Moore says would help the budget might be tough. Growth rates would need to be exponentially higher to outpace the United States’ spending and borrowing needs, independent experts say.
The Biden administration sees money-saving policies on Medicare and reduced spending on other “special interests,” such as fossil fuels, as a way to curb federal outlays, said Daniel Hornung, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, in an interview.“You’ve got to bring revenues in better line with expenditures,” Hornung said.
As the deficit grows, borrowing becomes more expensive through higher interest rates. And as those interest payments take up a larger share of the federal budget, they crowd out other investments Congress and the president could make.