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Comment by ElectronCharge

3 days ago

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This administration has added more debt than any previous. So this talk about lowering debt is pure bullshit.

  • An "administration" doesn't add debt - Congress does. Power of the purse strings, no?

    I'm not sure what you mean by "this administration". Are you including DJT's first term?

    Regardless, here are the numbers per Investopedia:

    "Based on total dollar amounts, Joe Biden contributed the most to the national debt, adding $8.5 trillion during his presidency, followed by Donald Trump ($7.8 trillion in his first term) and Barack Obama ($7.7 trillion during his two terms)."

    DJT's first term had the excuse of the COVID pandemic. Other than the final year when that was an issue, his spending was reasonable. 0'Biden on the other hand, had no such excuse for his spending binge, which was consistent across his (thankfully few) four years in office.

    The "talk of lowering debt" is necessary, since right now we're spending 25% of federal revenue (about $1 trillion) paying the interest on our current massive national debt.

    The hope is that a supercharged US economy can raise revenues enough to ease the pain of paying down the national debt that's largely been accumulated since 2000. It must be done to avoid the inevitable consequences.

> Musk did nothing except make recommendations. The executive branch took concrete action.

Can you think of a “recommendation” that wasn’t acted upon?

  • Not who you were responding to:

    It is misremembering to frame their actions as recommendations, when they took action themselves, acted first, and asked for permission later. There were infamous public displays of being given carte blanche on the spot after employees told them they didn't have just that. They put metaphorical "heads on pikes" so that they wouldn't have to face questions again outside of court.