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56%
“The Wall Street Journal’s survey, conducted July 5-9, received responses from 68 professional forecasters from business, Wall Street and academia. Of the 50 who answered questions about Trump and Biden, 56% said inflation would be higher under another Trump term than a Biden term, versus 16% who said the opposite. The remainder saw no material difference.”
“What Republicans want is to spend at levels they think appropriate (more on defense and some domestic programs, less on others) and to tax at levels they think appropriate (generally less, especially for the wealthy). They are consistent in those preferences. They don’t care — at all — about how the revenues the government receives from those taxes compares to overall government spending. Republican preferences don’t add up, which is why deficits leap up every time they get to control policy.”
“There’s a lot of people that could use those checks. I don’t know about needing them, but we could all use them. The debt is so far out of hand that it’s a fantasy number at this point. We might as well just blow it out till everything collapses.”
— Trump supporter Anthony McGill, quoted by the New York Times.
98%
“Sustained federal budget deficits and debt will hit the highest levels since World War II over the next decade, according to a Congressional Budget Office report,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “The government will spend $1 trillion more than it collects in 2020 and deficits will exceed that amount every year for the foreseeable future. As a share of gross domestic product, the deficit will be at least 4.3% every year through 2030. That would be the longest stretch of budget deficits exceeding 4% of GDP over the past century. … Debt held by the public will be 81% of GDP this year and is projected to reach 98% by 2030.”
$1 trillion
“The U.S. government’s budget deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019, a $205 billion increase from a year earlier, as America’s fiscal imbalance widened for a fourth consecutive year despite a sustained run of economic growth,” the Washington Post reports. “The country’s worsening fiscal picture runs in sharp contrast to President Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate the federal debt within eight years. Since taking office, Trump has endorsed big spending increases and steered most Republicans to abandon the deficit obsession they held during the Obama administration.”
$984 billion
“The government ran a budget deficit of just under $1 trillion in the just-closed fiscal year,” the AP reports. “The $984 billion deficit tally for 2019 came in more than $200 billion more than last year’s, despite very low unemployment and continuing economic growth.”
$1 trillion
“The U.S. budget gap widened to more than $1 trillion in the first 11 months of the fiscal year, the Treasury Department said Thursday, the first time deficits have topped that amount in seven years,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
$12.2 trillion
The CBO says federal deficits are projected to grow much more than expected over the next decade thanks to the two-year budget agreement lawmakers and the White House struck last month, the Wall Street Journal reports. “The agency increased its forecasts for deficits over the next decade by $809 billion, to $12.2 trillion… The increase primarily reflects higher federal spending under the new budget deal, partly offset by lower projected interest rates.”
“Donald Trump has shown himself to be the most fiscally irresponsible president we have had in generations. Here’s a guy who’s managed to rack up a $2 trillion deficit at a moment of full employment in the country, it’s almost impossible to do that.”
— Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), telling CBS News that President Trump was the most fiscally reckless president in decades.
$100.5 billion
“The U.S. recorded a $100.5 billion budget deficit in October, an increase of about 60 percent from a year earlier, as spending grew twice as fast as revenue,” Bloomberg reports. “A ballooning U.S. budget shortfall — fueled by tax cuts, spending hikes and an aging population — is driving the Treasury Department to raise its long-term debt issuance.”
