The high inflation since Covid and $40 trillion in debt didn’t happen under one party

atmavatar 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The (vast?) majority of the debt happened as the result of the Republican party both increasing spending and cutting taxes every time it lands someone in the White House and before midterms flip the House back to Democrats.

There's a fair argument to be made that the Democrats could/should have reversed these disastrous fiscal policies when they gained power, but it's important to be wary of Murc's Law while also acknowledging doing so would also burn a lot of political capital Democrats never seem to have much of.

The American electorate is a grade school child constantly evaluating which parent it likes the most. One tells you that you can eat as much candy as you like and play video games all night (neither of which hit you until the following day), while the other occasionally tells you to eat your vegetables, do your homework, and clean your room.

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jameslk 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> The (vast?) majority of the debt happened as the result of the Republican party both increasing spending and cutting taxes every time it lands someone in the White House and before midterms flip the House back to Democrats.

Both parties have run an increasing deficit, with the only outlier being a small amount of time in the late 90s. The deficit is largely caused by social security outlays, medicare/medicaid outlays, and military spending, none of which are going to meaningfully change under either party

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carefree-bob 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Under Bill Clinton, in 2000 we ran a (small) surplus, but even then, the shock of running a surplus hid the fact that the debt increased during his term overall. That was the last president in which there was even one year of the debt decreasing, all other presidents increased the debt. Here is data:

https://www.macrotrends.net/2496/national-debt-growth-by-yea...

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sbohacek 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe you mean something different, but not every recent president has "run an increasing deficit" Reagan: +74B Bush: +103B Clinton: -382B Bush: +1.5T Obama: -747B Trump: +2.1T Biden: -1T

Where change in deficit is the final budget deficit - starting budget deficit

So, every Republican president runs an increasing deficit and every Democrat president runs a decreasing deficit.

	▲	jameslk 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Congress is the one that largely makes the fiscal policy choices. For example, during Clinton’s second term when the deficit was almost eliminated (some claim there was a surplus, but there wasn’t because of social security liabilities), you had a republican controlled congress who were pushing for cuts and fiscal tightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America

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throw0101a 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The high inflation since Covid and $40 trillion in debt didn’t happen under one party

Between his first term and his second term to date (2+ more years to go), Trump is responsible for more that one quarter (29%) of US debt (USD 11.6T / 40T):

* https://time.com/article/2026/08/21/national-debt-trump-bide...

There was a bit of a mitigating circumstance of COVID (for Trump and Biden), which caused the debt to jump for many countries as well (and not just the US), but it's not like Trump et co are helping the math along with all the tax cuts and asking for a US$ >1T military budget.

But I would say a large reason why the US is in the fiscal position it is now in is because of Trump and a GOP Congress. (See also tax cuts under Bush 43 and Reagan; Bush 41 raised them a bit.)

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matteoraso 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm a lot more sympathetic to Joe Biden temporarily causing a spike in inflation while helping America recover from a horrible pandemic than Republicans habitually running the country off of debt.

	▲	jameslk 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Joe Biden didn’t cause a spike in inflation, congress did. And the policies that caused it wasn’t under Joe Biden’s term Also, inflation wasn’t temporary

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owebmaster 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But just one wins elections promising they will reducing it

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jameslk 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Neither party has realistic plans to reduce the debt. It’s been that way for decades. Kicking the can down the road gets more votes

	▲	watwut 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It was democrat who ended with surplus. This is not both sides issue. This very much "conservatives make things worst and hide behind both sides".

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chucksta 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What's the other promising to do with it?