I watched Kevin McCarthy (Speaker of US House of Representatives) talk about the Republican Bill, i.e. “Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023”, to raise the US Government’s debt ceiling by $1.5 Trillion which is projected to last for 12 months. I asked myself “Is the debt being accumulated due to US Government deficit spending a problem?” and concluded that the answer is “yes”. I decided to research the problem and found the "Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio" Report (3/27/2023) by the Center for American Progress. The report finds that Republican tax cuts are primarily responsible for increasing the current US National Debt Ratio. The following information was extracted from this report:
"Tax cuts initially enacted during Republican trifectas in the past 25 years, George Bush (two tax cuts (2001 and 2003)) slashed taxes disproportionately for the wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues. These tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession are excluded. Eventually, the tax cuts are projected to grow to more than 100 percent of the increase.”
President Trump’s signature tax bill (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) enacted when Republicans gained control of the White House and both houses of Congress in 2017, will cost roughly $1.7 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2023. These tax cuts reduced personal income tax rates and permanently lowered the corporate tax rate, with additional changes. The bill was paired with an expansion of the child tax credit. The 2017 tax changes benefited the wealthy making the U.S. tax code more regressive which will contribute to increasing the estimated US National Debt by $8.2 Trillion to ~$28.45 Trillion through FY 2021 due to government deficit spending by President Trump’s Administration. This was during a period of US economic growth between 2017 through 2019. The economic slowdown in 2020 due to the COVID Pandemic did escalate the rate of accumulating US National Debt because economic stimulus bills were passed by the US Government in 2020 and early 2021. I found the following information about US National Debt increases during President Trump’s administration (2018 through 2021; note the US Government’s fiscal year XXXX is from October XXXX-1 through September XXXX therefore, the Trump Administration established budgets for the Federal Government in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021):
* FY 2021: $1.5 trillion
* FY 2020: $4.2 trillion
* FY 2019: $1.2 trillion
* FY 2018: $1.3 trillion
Basically, Republican fiscal policies have significantly contributed to the accumulating US National Debt during the past 22 years and I expect that the proposed “Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023” legislation will make this problem worse.