The bottom line is both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for growth of the national debt. Scott said that 'Democrats are responsible for the massive spending and debt growth.' We reached out to Scott’s office and didn’t hear back. 'It has been produced by Democrats and Republicans, on both a partisan and bipartisan basis,' Goldwein said. Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that promotes deficit reduction, said both parties own the current debt. Major commitments, such as Social Security payments, shape the country’s fiscal picture regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. Plus, each president’s debt record reflects laws and spending plans passed before he took office. Congress writes the spending and tax bills that a president signs, and control of Congress has shifted back and forth between the parties for the past three decades. To be sure, no president has been totally responsible for the debt that accumulated during his administration. Not a single Democrat voted for that law, and among Republicans, only a dozen House members voted against it.Īll told, before the pandemic struck, the debt had increased $3.3 trillion on Trump’s watch.įact-check: With COVID case numbers so high, is this a 'pandemic of the unvaccinated'? But after two years - even before the pandemic pummeled the economy - government revenues were down by about half a trillion dollars from what they would have been without the tax cuts.

The 2017 Republican Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which slashed personal and corporate taxes, was supposed to spur enough economic growth to make up for lower tax rates. Democrats and Republicans also approved spending bills that increased defense and social program spending.īut a good chunk of the debt increase came from initiatives backed solely by Trump and the then-GOP-controlled Congress. It included the $2.1 trillion CARES Act, and another dose of relief of about $950 billion in late December 2020. That spending was backed by both Republicans and Democrats. What we found is that from the day President Donald Trump took office to his last day, the national debt grew $7.8 trillion.Ībout half of that - $3.6 trillion - came from dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Scott didn’t mention the recent Republican record on adding to the debt, so we looked it up. But since none of it has been enacted yet, it hasn’t added a penny to the debt. How much it would ultimately contribute to the debt depends on the tax increases in the final package. Now, the Democrats are seeking to pass a measure that could spend trillions more on infrastructure and social programs. The bill passed without a single Republican vote. Most of that spending takes place over two years, but it has already added to the running tally of the national debt. In nominal dollars, since World War II, just over 60% of the growth in the debt took place under Republican presidents, and about 40% under Democratic presidents.īiden championed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act to help the country control and recover from the pandemic. is now subject to a $28.4 trillion cap on its debt load, unless Congress finds a way to agree on a new increase or suspension.įact-check: Are health officials using census data to target unvaccinated people? With a temporary suspension of the debt ceiling having expired on Aug. The national debt is the accumulated total of all the money the government has borrowed over the decades to cover its deficits and fund its operations, but hasn’t yet paid back. It has been a decades-long, bipartisan effort.

'Democrats are responsible for the massive spending and debt growth, they alone need to take responsibility for raising the debt limit.'Īre Democrats alone responsible for the growth in the debt? 'We won’t vote to bail them out and cut them more blank checks to bury us in debt,' Scott wrote Sept. Rick Scott said it should be up to Democrats to solve this problem on their own. in Texas, not somewhere closerįlorida Republican Sen. Treasury bonds.įact-check: Why Haitians are crossing into the U.S. That would affect Social Security recipients, veterans and the people, banks and foreign nations that hold U.S. Without an increase in the debt ceiling, the country will not be able to borrow money to cover its bills. is again facing a reckoning on the size of the national debt, which is approaching its legal limit. Rick Scott: “Democrats are responsible for the massive spending and debt growth, they alone need to take responsibility for raising the debt limit.”

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