Trump Has No Discernible Interest in Fiscal Responsibility
Elon Musk, President-elect Donald Trump’s bounciest adviser, thinks he can identify “at least” $2 trillion in federal budget cuts. Although critics derided the billionaire entrepreneur’s suggestion as improbably ambitious, that assessment hinges on political assumptions rather than a clear-eyed understanding of what could be accomplished if Trump were serious about restoring fiscal discipline.
Unfortunately, there is little reason to think he is. Trump’s record during his first term and his positions during his 2024 campaign suggest he will continue the federal government’s longstanding pattern of unrestrained borrowing even as the imbalance between revenue and spending becomes increasingly dire.
Cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget, which totaled $6.8 trillion in fiscal year 2024, would return us to the level of spending recorded just five years ago, which gives you a sense of how quickly things have gone from bad to worse. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the annual deficit, currently $1.6 trillion (5.6 percent of GDP), will reach $2.6 trillion (6.1 percent of GDP) by 2034.
Those deficits add up. The total federal debt held by the public is more than $28 trillion, which is about the size of the U.S. economy. By 2034, the CBO projects, that number will reach 116 percent of GDP, “the highest level ever recorded.”
More debt means more interest, which currently accounts for 13 percent of the federal budget and 3.1 percent of GDP. By 2034, the CBO estimates, those numbers will rise to 16 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump risibly claimed he would eliminate the national debt within eight years. But even before federal spending spiked in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, his own budget estimated that the number would instead rise from $14.7 trillion in 2017 to $22.8 trillion in 2025.
By the end of Trump’s term, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculated, he had signed legislation and issued executive orders that, on balance, added $8.4 trillion to the national debt (including interest) over 10 years. As of last June, the corresponding figure for President Joe Biden was $4.3 trillion.
During his 2024 run, Trump expressed approximately zero concern about any of this. To the contrary, the Republican platform in effect promised more borrowing to finance “large tax cuts,” an expanded military budget, and “the largest
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