The US deficit for the year ending September 30, 2020 was $3,100,000,000,000!  The 2020 deficit is the difference between what we spent in fiscal year 2020 ($6.55 trillion) and what we took in ($3.42 trillion).  The US deficit is the highest it has been since WWII and three times what it was in just 2019 as reported here.   And please note that the 2020 deficit gets added to debt we still owe from previous years to get the national debt.  That figure stands at a whopping $27 trillion dollars.

For sure the CARES stimulus,Pay Check Protection program and other CoVID spending contributed a lot to the dramatic increase in the deficit from 2019 to 2020.  But let’s not forget that Trump’s corporate and high net worth individuals tax cuts help raise the national debt to record highs.   The Administration’s willing to subsidize any sector promising votes without alienating Trump’s alt-right base (agriculture, energy, etc) left its mark too.

Since President Obama is never far from Trump’s thought and Obama and Hillary, according to Donald are the source of every problem, it is fitting to contrast the Obama deficit and national debt with the Trump-era deficit and debt.

Trump has overseen the fastest increase in the debt of any president—almost 36% from 2017 to 2020 –  Thebalance.com

On January 20, 2017 when Trump was inaugurated, the debt was $19.9 trillion.  It is now $27 trillion, a 36% increase.  $27 trillion is 102% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product, the value of all goods and services produced in the country).  If we took the proceeds from the sell of every goods and service made or provided in the US in 2020 and paid it on the national debt, we would still owe!

Simple subtraction ($27 trillion minus $19.9 trillion) tells you that Trump added $6.1 trillion to the national debt in less than 4 years.  Compare this to Obama’s numbers.  When Obama took office on January 20, 2009, the national debt was $10.7 trillion.   When he left office on January 20, 2017, Trump’s inauguration, the national debt was $19.9 trillion.   Obama added $9.2 trillion to the national debt in 8 years using this method of calculating how a presidency impacted the national debt.

Things were not easy peasy for Obama either.  Where Trump had CoVID to contend with, Obama had the banking crisis of 2008 and the recession of 2011 to deal with.  But the point of this post is not to compare crises  but to give you the facts to talk intelligently about whether the GOP is the party of fiscal conservatism it claims to be or hypocrites who only care about balancing the budget when a Dem is in the White House.