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Republicans pride themselves on fiscal responsibility. Or at least they used to. Since President Trump found his way into the party’s bloodstream, conservative lawmakers have only been able to pay lip service to the crisis, which is growing worse despite a robust economy. On Tuesday, the Treasury Department reported that the national debt has for the first time eclipsed $22 trillion, up from $19.9 trillion when Trump took office.
The president doesn’t seem as concerned as he was when President Obama was in office.
The national debt did indeed skyrocket under Obama. Ten years ago, the United States owed only $10.6 trillion, but the government decided that the financial crisis necessitated increased spending, causing the debt to balloon. Republicans were critical, and during the 2016 campaign Trumppromised he would eliminate the debt“over a period of eight years.” This isn’t going to happen. Despite inheriting a healthy economy, the debt has risen by over $2 trillion since Trump took office, thanksto the $1.5 trillion tax cut for the rich Congress passed in the fall of 2017, as well as exorbitant defense spending. Last summer, the Congressional Budget Officenoted in a reportthat, at 78 percent, the ratio of the debt to the GDP was at its highest level since World War II. The office said in January that it estimates the number will rise to 93 percent by 2030, barring changes in federal law.
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The Trump administration has responded with a shrug. When Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was asked last week why the president didn’t mention the national deficit in his State of the Union address, Mulvaney reportedly said “nobody cares.” By “nobody,” Mulvaney may just mean Trump.In December, theDaily Beastreported that the presidentisn’t worried about the debt crisisdespite pleas from advisers to take it seriously. When confronted with charts explaining the severity of the situation in 2017, the president brushed it off as something that wouldn’t affect the United States until after he left office.
“Yeah,” the president said of the looming crisis, “but I won’t be here.”
