During his 2024 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden made frequent references to his “predecessor,” who happens to be the presumptive Republican nominee who is seeking reelection this year.
Biden did not use Donald Trump's name, and in part of his March 7 speech he focused on a number of contrasts with his predecessor, including the management of the nation's finances, Biden said.
Biden said the Trump administration “increased the national debt more than any other presidential term in American history.” “Check the numbers, guys.”
I did that.
Experts say it's difficult to draw a straight line between a president and the debt accrued on his watch. But beyond that, there are a variety of ways to look at the numbers, some of which are less favorable to Biden's claims.
Biden said the debt he is monitoring is on track to exceed President Trump's one-term debt accumulation by the end of his term on January 20, 2025. Biden has already racked up $6.32 trillion in debt in his first three years. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.582 trillion deficit in his final year. Adding these two numbers together gives Biden a total of $7.902 trillion over his four years.
The total federal debt has increased by about $7.8 trillion under President Trump's watch, according to Treasury data.
President Barack Obama oversaw a debt increase of more than $9.5 trillion during his two terms as president, more than President Trump's total.
However, the White House told PolitiFact that it uses “any presidential term” to refer to Biden's single four-year term, and that the figure for Trump's four-year term is the same as the previous four years. He said it was higher than the presidential term in one year.
This backward difference is worth noting.
So far, the debt under Mr. Biden's watch has increased by just under $6.7 trillion. That's less than Trump's total, but Biden is still on pace to surpass Trump's level by the end of his term.
Another way to analyze this debt would be advantageous to Biden, but the White House did not offer it as a justification after PolitiFact's investigation.
The day after Biden's speech, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington-based group that studies fiscal policy, said Trump signed a bill or executive order that would add $8.4 trillion in new borrowing over 10 years. However, about half of them reported that it was during the pandemic. peace of mind.
The group said this is more money than any previous president and more than Mr. Biden. The group hasn't recently updated its estimate for Biden, but said it is “significantly less” than Trump's.
Why comparisons between presidents are difficult
But the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's approach highlights the challenges of allocating debt for any president.
Using the group's methodology, much of the debt assigned to Trump won't show up on the federal ledger until several years after Trump leaves office in 2021. This reality becomes even more complicated when mandatory payments are taken into account.
Much of the current federal debt comes from mandatory payments such as Social Security and Medicare. These started to proliferate around 2010, when baby boomers started receiving large amounts of money from these programs.
Generations of politicians from both parties approved and revised these plans long before President Trump took office.
Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit organization that monitors the federal budget, told PolitiFact about a related 2023 fact check: “Who was monitoring how much spending?'' It's always difficult to know what's going on.”
President Trump's largest single jump in federal debt occurred during the first phase of the 2020 coronavirus relief bill. President Trump signed the bill, which passed with broad bipartisan support.
Douglas Holtz Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum, told PolitiFact in 2023: “Everyone, including myself, said it was worth doing, but without it, things will get worse.” It would have gotten worse.” It's natural to blame Trump exclusively for what everyone thought was necessary.”
our verdict
Biden said the Trump administration “increased the national debt more than any other presidential term in American history.”
Mr. Trump has certainly accumulated more debt during his term than any previous president in a single term, and more than Mr. Biden has accumulated during his previous term. But Biden's term is not yet over.
Projections suggest that the debt during Biden's four years in office will exceed the total debt accumulated under the Trump administration. Also, assigning debt to specific presidents can be misleading because much of it goes back to decades-old bipartisan legislation that set the parameters for Social Security and Medicare.
Although this statement is partially accurate, it requires additional context, so I rate it a “half-truth.”
