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The GOP, Bush and Trump tax cuts have added $10 Trillion (57%) to the debt [1]

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Date: 2023-10-22

The Treasury Dept has spoken and the answer is that the Bush and Trump Tax Cuts for the wealthy has added a total of $10 Trillion to the National Debt.

"After record U.S. government spending in 2020 and 2021" due to programs related to the economic fallout from the Covid-19 crisis, the Washington Post reports, "the deficit dropped from close to $3 trillion to close to $1 trillion in 2022. But rather than continue to fall to its pre-pandemic levels, the deficit unexpectedly jumped this year to roughly $2 trillion."

[...]

Bobby Kogan, senior director for federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, has argued repeatedly that growing deficits in recent years have a clear and singular chief cause: Republican tax cuts that benefit mostly the wealthy and profitable corporations

In response to the Treasury figures released Friday, Kogan said that "roughly 75%" of the surge in the deficit and the debt ratio, the amount of federal debt relative to the overall size of the economy, was due to revenue decreases resulting from GOP-approved tax cuts over recent decades. "Of the remaining 25%," he said, "more than half" was higher interest payments on the debt related to Federal Reserve policy.

"We have a revenue problem, due to tax cuts," said Kogan, pointing to the major tax laws enacted under the administrations of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. "The Bush and Trump tax cuts broke our modern tax structure. Revenue is significantly lower and no longer grows much with the economy." And he offered this visualization about a growing debt ratio:

"The point I want to make again and again and again is that, relative to the last time CBO was projecting stable debt/GDP, spending is down, not up," Kogan said in a tweet Friday night. "It's lower revenue that's 100% responsible for the change in debt projections. If you take away nothing else, leave with this point."

[...]

In a detailed analysis produced in March, Kogan explained that, "If not for the Bush tax cuts and their extensions—as well as the Trump tax cuts—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio (debt as a percentage of the economy) would be declining. Instead, these tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession are excluded."

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/22/2200920/-The-GOP-Bush-and-Trump-tax-cuts-have-added-10-Trillion-57-to-the-debt?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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