Trump Added Nearly Twice as Much Net Debt as Biden, Report Finds

In his four-year term, former President Donald Trump ran up the national debt nearly twice as much as President Biden has during his term to date, a new analysis shows.

The Details: The analysis is from the self-described “nonpartisan non-profit” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It found that President Trump approved $8.8 trillion of gross new ten-year borrowing and $443 billion of deficit reduction, while President Biden approved $6.2 trillion of borrowing and $1.9 trillion of reduction. For Trump, $3.6 trillion was COVID-19 relief spending, while for Biden it was $2.1 trillion. This leaves the net of new ten-year borrowing for Trump at $8.4 trillion, and for Biden at $4.3 trillion. 

For Context: Excluding COVID spending, 77 percent of Trump’s spending had bipartisan approval from Congress, while for Biden it was just 29 percent. Trump’s biggest drivers of higher public debt were tax cuts and bipartisan spending packages. For Biden, they were student loan relief, healthcare for veterans, and the executive actions that reformed things like food stamps and Medicaid.

How The Media Covered It: The story was not covered much by sources on the right, but The New York Sun (Right bias) framed its headline about the combined amount Trump and Biden ran up the debt, while outlets from the left and center mostly framed headlines around Trump’s borrowing heavily outpacing Biden’s. Most outlets only offered gross borrowing figures and didn’t mention the debt reduction measures.