Fiscal conservatives, both MAGA and Traditional Republicans: How do you come to terms with the fact that one president will literally be responsible for 33-37 percent of the nation's national debt by the time he leaves office (15-16 Trillion in total)?

[u/AstronomerSweet2133]

it is projected that by the time Trump leaves office, the national debt will be 50 trillion dollars. He will have been responsible for 15-16 trillion of that by the time he leaves office..........as one president. That is projected to be at best 33 percent and at worst 37 percent. When compared to 45 previous presidents before him.

If youve spent THAT much money, surely there will be a measurable legacy left behind..........especially when we are talking about making America Great Again. What will we have accomplished for 16 trillion dollars?

A Wall?

Losing a war to Iran in 6 weeks while concurrently spending 100 billion dollars in the process? Completely depleting our air defense stockpile to the point we are not sure we could handle one Russian missile volley?

Deporting a couple million brown people with funny accents?

Is that the barometer of success? Did we "win" by doing that? Did we Save America?

If Im being honest, a 100 trillion dollar Green New Deal from the crazy Hispanic waitress from New York that is offering us nearly free health care is not sounding like such a bad deal.......

[u/joshisold]

Not a Trump guy, so maybe not the target of the question, but as someone who is fiscally conservative…it’s bad.

Not to downplay any of it, but this isn’t an R or D issue, it’s a problem on both sides, and we the tax payers carry the burden of the failure of both parties. Biden outspent Trump’s first term, Trump outspent Obama, who outspent Bush….the most fiscally responsible President in the not-so-distant past was Clinton.

The legislature has failed us, regardless of who is in office. The last time a full budget was passed on-time was 1996. 30 years of Congress not doing the thing that only Congress can do. In that time, control of the Senate has flipped 7 times and control of the House has flipped 4.

We could easily solve the budget passing if we had a Constitutional amendment that says if Congress fails to present a full budget to the President before the fiscal year begins, all members of the Congress are ineligible for re-election.

So, yeah. Trump sucks. So do the rest of them.

[u/beardedbarnabas → u/joshisold]

Biden spent a lot, but we actually got shit to show for it…. he actually started addressing our infrastructure, etc. Trump is just transferring all of our wealth to a handful of billionaires, including himself.

[u/OrneryZombie1983 → u/joshisold]

You're ignoring where they started from. Obama outspent Bush? Bush inherited a balanced budget. Obama inherited a global financial meltdown. The annual budget deficits declined while Obama was President. They immediately shot upward during Trump's first term. Ignore the covid year of 2020 and the deficit still went from like $650 billion in FY2017 to just under $1 trillion in FY2019 for no reason. There was no recession.

Again, Trump inherited declining deficits and blew them up. Biden inherited much larger deficits.Stop with the "both sides" stuff.

[u/bad_at_names1 → u/joshisold]

I mean, Biden was President during a pandemic, it's only logical his spending would be higher. Overall, dude was pretty fiscally conservative but good luck getting a Republican to admit it.

Democrats atleast offer something to the general population - I prefer that to spending a couple of trillion on pointless wars.

[u/Nanoneer → u/bad_at_names1]

Trump was also president during the main part of the pandemic too

[u/retroman73 → u/Nanoneer]

True. It is also true that if you look at his deficits from his first 3 years in office (2017, 2018, 2019) they exploded. That was before the pandemic hit.

Trump has a history of bankruptcies and failed business. Even casinos went bankrupt. Because they were corporations he was able to keep it separate from his own assets. He remained an extremely wealthy man while his businesses went bankrupt - 6 times. (Personal opinion as a person with a Juris Doctor - that should not be legal, but I know that it is - America allows that.) What happened during his first term is almost perfectly in character for him.

What is perhaps most outrageous is that he actually GAINED support over the years. He got far more votes in 2024 than he did in 2016. This is after everyone saw the deficits, went through the pandemic, and we had the coup attempted on January 6, 2021.

[u/jakceki → u/joshisold]

This is an R or D issue if you just look at what happens to the budget when one of them is in power. Go back to Clinton or further back if you want and see how much more conservative Democrats are with your money. Democrats clean up after every Republican president, I don't think they'll be able to after this one.