Read the whole thing.
"Universite du Quebec's Pierre Lemieux notes that in 2019, the U.S. deficit touched $984 billion. That's almost double the $585 billion deficit that Trump inherited from his predecessor. Correspondingly, the federal debt in 2019 was 14 percent greater than in 2016 adding up to a whopping $22.7 trillion — a trillion dollars more than the total U.S. economy. Democrats of course never say "no" to government spending. But for the first two years of the Trump presidency, Trump's own party controlled the House and the Senate. So if Trump had the inclination, he could have reined in spending, or at least flat-lined it. But that would have required tackling popular old-age entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which constitute almost half of the federal budget.
Trump, however, made a deal with Democrats, handing them more entitlement spending in exchange for more defense spending. The upshot, as my Reason colleague Matt Welch has noted, is that under Trump, the annual price tag of government went up by $937 billion in less than four years in contrast to the $870 billion price hike during Obama's eight years.
...
Biden plans to pay for all this by repealing Trump's tax cuts for corporations and high earners. The right calls this socialism, but it is far from clear why taxing and spending in real time qualifies as socialism and spending now and taxing later doesn't."
"Universite du Quebec's Pierre Lemieux notes that in 2019, the U.S. deficit touched $984 billion. That's almost double the $585 billion deficit that Trump inherited from his predecessor. Correspondingly, the federal debt in 2019 was 14 percent greater than in 2016 adding up to a whopping $22.7 trillion — a trillion dollars more than the total U.S. economy. Democrats of course never say "no" to government spending. But for the first two years of the Trump presidency, Trump's own party controlled the House and the Senate. So if Trump had the inclination, he could have reined in spending, or at least flat-lined it. But that would have required tackling popular old-age entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which constitute almost half of the federal budget.
Trump, however, made a deal with Democrats, handing them more entitlement spending in exchange for more defense spending. The upshot, as my Reason colleague Matt Welch has noted, is that under Trump, the annual price tag of government went up by $937 billion in less than four years in contrast to the $870 billion price hike during Obama's eight years.
...
Biden plans to pay for all this by repealing Trump's tax cuts for corporations and high earners. The right calls this socialism, but it is far from clear why taxing and spending in real time qualifies as socialism and spending now and taxing later doesn't."