Republican Votes Helped Washington Pile Up Debt
WASHINGTON — President Biden will submit his latest budget request to Congress on Thursday, offering what his administration says will be $2 trillion in plans to reduce deficits and future growth of the national debt.
Republicans, who are demanding deep spending cuts in exchange for raising the nation’s borrowing cap, will almost certainly greet that proposal with a familiar refrain: Mr. Biden and his party are to blame for ballooning the debt.
But an analysis of House and Senate voting records, and of fiscal estimates of legislation prepared by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, shows that Republicans bear at least equal blame as Democrats for the biggest drivers of federal debt growth that passed Congress over the last two presidential administrations.
The national debt has grown to $31.4 trillion from just under $6 trillion in 2000, bumping against the statutory limit on federal borrowing. That increase, which spanned the presidential administrations of two Republicans and two Democrats, has been fueled by tax cuts, wars, economic stimulus and the growing costs of retirement and health programs. Since 2017, when Donald J. Trump took the White House, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have joined together to pass a series of spending increases and tax cuts that the budget office projects will add trillions to the debt.
The analysis is based on the forecasts that the C.B.O. regularly issues for the federal budget. They include descriptions of newly passed legislation that affects spending, revenues and deficits, tallying the costs of those new laws over the course of a decade. Going back to the start of Mr. Trump’s tenure, those reports highlight 13 new laws that, by the C.B.O.’s projections, will combine to add more than $11.5 trillion to the debt.
Nearly three-quarters of that new debt was approved in bills that gained the support of a majority of Republicans in at least one chamber of Congress. Three-fifths of it was signed into law by Mr. Trump.
Some of those bills were in response to emergencies, like the early rounds of stimulus payments to people and businesses during the pandemic. Others were routine appropriations bills, which increased spending on the military and on domestic issues like research and education.
Understand the U.S. Debt Ceiling
What is the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling, also called the debt limit, is a cap on the total amount of money that the federal government is authorized to borrow via U.S. Treasury securities, such as bills and savings bonds, to fulfill its financial obligations. Because the United States runs budget deficits, it must borrow huge sums of money to pay its bills.
The limit has been hit. What now? America hit its technical debt limit on Jan. 19. The Treasury Department will now begin using “extraordinary measures” to continue paying the government’s obligations. These measures are essentially fiscal accounting tools that curb certain government investments so that the bills continue to be paid. Those options could be exhausted by June.
What is at stake? Once the government exhausts its extraordinary measures and runs out of cash, it would be unable to issue new debt and pay its bills. The government could wind up defaulting on its debt if it is unable to make required payments to its bondholders. Such a scenario would be economically devastating and could plunge the globe into a financial crisis.
Can the government do anything to forestall disaster? There is no official playbook for what Washington can do. But options do exist. The Treasury could try to prioritize payments, such as paying bondholders first. If the United States does default on its debt, which would rattle the markets, the Federal Reserve could theoretically step in to buy some of those Treasury bonds.
Why is there a limit on U.S. borrowing? According to the Constitution, Congress must authorize borrowing. The debt limit was instituted in the early 20th century so that the Treasury would not need to ask for permission each time it had to issue debt to pay bills.
Many of the votes were roundly bipartisan: More than 85 percent of the projected debt added over the last six years passed with a majority of Democratic votes in both chambers. Almost an identical amount of debt passed with at least a third of Republican votes in the House or Senate. Chief among them were a series of Covid-19 relief measures totaling more than $3 trillion and passing with landslide majorities in 2020.
Some of the laws passed entirely along party lines. In those cases, on net, Republicans added slightly more to the debt than Democrats.
That’s because of the sweeping corporate and individual tax cuts that Mr. Trump signed into law at the end of 2017, which cost $2 trillion. Despite Republican claims that the tax cuts paid for themselves, the C.B.O. estimated last month that Mr. Trump’s corporate tax cuts alone would cost the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue in the years to come. Earlier C.B.O. analyses suggest that the full slate of tax cuts have already cost the government $1.2 trillion through the 2022 fiscal year.
The tax cuts’ price tag outweighed the net cost of the two most fiscally consequential bills that Mr. Biden and Democrats passed along party lines: a $1.9 trillion economic aid bill in 2021 and a climate, health and tax bill approved late last summer, which is projected to reduce future deficits by nearly $300 billion.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California and many other prominent Republicans who are now leading the resistance to raising the borrowing limit did vote against large spending bills that other Republicans backed under Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden. But they also voted for trillions of dollars in pandemic aid under Mr. Trump and roundly backed his tax cuts.
House Republicans have pushed to extend the 2017 tax cuts, which would add trillions to the debt. They also support rolling back tax increases and enhanced tax enforcement measures approved by Mr. Biden, which would have the effect of adding hundreds of billions of dollars to deficits if they were to succeed.
Top congressional Republicans rarely acknowledge the role that their party has played in adding to deficits and debt in recent years, instead laying the blame on Mr. Biden and Democrats.
“Biden’s numerous bailouts and massive government expansion disguised as Covid relief has blown out spending and exacerbated our debt disaster,” Representative Jodey Arrington of Texas, who chairs the House Budget Committee, said last month.
Beyond Congress, Republican candidates have long tweaked their party for not taking a harder line on spending and debt. “The last two Republican presidents added more than $10 trillion to the national debt,” Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador who is now running for president, told the conservative Club for Growth on Saturday, as reported by Politico. “Think about that. A third of our debt happened under just two Republicans.”
Biden administration officials blame Mr. Trump and former President George W. Bush for running up debt, particularly with tax cuts. They claim credit for a decline in the budget deficit under Mr. Biden, even though that mostly occurred because the federal government stopped passing emergency aid bills as the pandemic eased its grip on the economy.
More on the Debt Limit
“I’m not going to sit and be lectured by MAGA Republicans in Congress about fiscal responsibility,” Mr. Biden wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
The budget office’s math is unsparing: It shows both parties acting, often together, to increase deficits and debt in recent years.
Mr. Biden has signed laws that are set to add just under $5 trillion to the debt over the next decade, by the C.B.O.’s estimation. The actual amount could be far less because of a quirk in how the C.B.O. accounts for two bills: the infrastructure bill Mr. Biden signed in 2021 and legislation enacted last year to expand health care for military veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. That quirk, which requires the budget office to assume certain spending will continue indefinitely even though Congress has not authorized it to do so, could be inflating the cost of the bills by nearly $1.3 trillion.
The estimate of the burn pits legislation could be counting nearly $400 billion in spending twice. The bill essentially shifts a large amount of spending on veterans from discretionary spending, which Congress approves annually, to mandatory spending, which essentially runs on autopilot. The budget office recognizes the new mandatory spending but assumes Congress will not cut discretionary veterans’ spending commensurately. Similarly, the infrastructure law calls for spending on projects like roads and broadband to increase in the near term and then taper off. C.B.O. estimates that tapering will never actually happen, and that spending will keep rising at the rate of inflation in later years.
But Mr. Biden has added to the debt not just by signing laws. He has also taken unilateral action that independent experts say could cost the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars. That includes the president’s plan to forgive student loan debts for a wide swath of borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year. The plan, which is currently on hold as it faces a challenge before the Supreme Court, would add $400 billion to deficits over the next 30 years if carried out, according to budget office estimates.
Mr. Trump, by comparison, signed laws adding nearly $7 trillion to the debt in the course of his four-year term, by the budget office’s estimation. That number does not include the cost of making permanent the individual tax cuts passed in 2017 that are set to expire after 2025; C.B.O. assumes those cuts will expire as scheduled.
Mr. McCarthy has acknowledged the degree of debt that Mr. Trump signed into law with the help of Republicans and Democrats in Congress. But he has blamed Mr. Biden for continued spending after the president entered the White House, and has made clear that House Republicans will demand steep cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit.
Asked by Margaret Brennan of CBS News in January about the amount of debt incurred under Mr. Trump, Mr. McCarthy replied, “You had a pandemic. And, as that pandemic comes down, those programs leave. I have watched the president say he cut it. No, it is spending $500 billion more than what was projected. They have spent more. And we’ve got to stop the waste.”
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