Comment by jameslk
15 hours ago
Both parties are responsible for the inflation and debt. Fiscal policy is largely driven by congress, not the president
15 hours ago
Both parties are responsible for the inflation and debt. Fiscal policy is largely driven by congress, not the president
And which party controls congress? I'll give you a hint: It's the party that spent decades advocating for irresponsible tax cuts without cutting spending[0].
[0] Yes, I know that the Republicans said that they were going to cut spending to match the tax cuts, but that never ends up happening.
The high inflation since Covid and $40 trillion in debt didn’t happen under one party
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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> 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.)
But just one wins elections promising they will reducing it
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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.
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Partly it doesn't happen because you can't really get much done even if you have a majority. You really end up needing a super majority.
The one thing both parties agree on though is running up a massive deficit
> You really end up needing a super majority.
Assuming you're talking about the Senate filibuster, then this can be changed or removed by simple majority vote. It's not in the Constitution, just a rule that the Senate adopted.
Like, personally I think that even sans filibuster, the Senate would move much slower than the House, because of election cycles.
I wonder which party's presidents have started all the trillion dollar wars in the past 30 years.....
This president single-handedly raised tariffs on goods from all over the world.
High inflation and large debt preceded the tariffs. That said, the tariffs didn’t help either. That’s why I said largely
Ultimately the president is enabled or constrained by laws enacted by congress
Yes. It is a tax. He raised a tax.
You might argue it is inflationary.
By that logic, interest rate hikes should be inflationary.
It is highly unusual to argue that taxation is inflationary since the whole point of inflation is to reduce demand.
The BBB, Iran war, and tariffs, something done solely by republicans, sometimes just the president, are the source of inflation, so you can attribute this situation mostly on Trump, and fully on republicans.
Higher inflation rates started before any of those, but those things didn’t help