Trump added twice as much to the national debt as Biden: Analysis

The Trump administration’s budget policies added twice the amount to the national deficit as President Biden, a new analysis finds.

The Trump administration borrowed $8.4 billion during the former president’s tenure, while Biden borrowed $4.3 billion, according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a Washington think tank. .

Excluding pandemic relief measures enacted by both presidents, the debt addition ratio still remains around two to one, with Trump adding $4.8 trillion in non-pandemic related fiscal debt and Biden adding $2. .2 billion dollars.

These additions were primarily due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), changes to the Affordable Care Act, and different budget laws in 2018 and 2019.

Most of Biden’s non-pandemic additions were due to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, student debt relief, appropriations bills and other executive actions.

The two parties increase debt in different ways, with Republicans doing so primarily through bipartisan legislation and Democrats doing so more through executive actions, says a preview of the CRFB’s future work.

Seventy-seven percent of the Trump administration’s additions to the national debt were attributable to bipartisan legislation, while 23 percent came from bills with little or no bipartisan support.

For the Biden administration, 29% of the additional debt came from bipartisan laws, while 71% came from unilateral decisions.

Both Trump and Biden spent their first two years in office with their parties in control of both chambers of Congress before the chamber changed during the midterm elections of each of their terms.

Fiscal pressures intensified under the Biden administration, as the deficit increased following fiscal measures approved in the wake of the pandemic.

US debt increased by more than $3 trillion between the first and second quarters of 2020 and has risen more sharply in recent years than in the years before the pandemic. The total debt is around 34.5 billion dollars.

As a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), US debt reached a new level of around 120 percent, compared to 100 percent before 2020.

Revenue-raising measures are currently being considered by both parties ahead of the expiration of individual tax cuts in the TCJA scheduled for the end of 2025.

Parties are now drawing lines on the scope and style of changes to the tax code, with top Democrats and Republicans on the finance and tax-writing committees defining the direction they see the U.S. revenue architecture should take.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story