The fiscal policies of the Trump administration added twice the amount to the national deficit as have President Biden’s, a new analysis has found.
Trump’s administration borrowed $8.4 trillion during the former president’s time in office, while Biden has borrowed $4.3 trillion, according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a Washington think tank.
Ignoring the pandemic relief measures enacted by both presidents, the proportion of debt addition still holds around 2-to-1, with former President Trump adding $4.8 trillion in non-pandemic-aid fiscal debt and Biden adding $2.2 trillion.
Those additions were mostly due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), changes to the Affordable Care Act, and different budgetary acts in 2018 and 2019.
Most of Biden’s non-pandemic-related additions were due to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, student debt relief, appropriations bills and other executive actions.
The two parties add to the debt in different ways, with Republicans doing it mostly through bipartisan legislation and Democrats doing it more through executive actions, the CRFB says in a preview of 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 and actions with little to no bipartisan support.
For the Biden administration, 29 percent of additional debt has come from bipartisan laws, while 71 percent came from unilateral decisions.
