Topic: The National Debt
“The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.”
By Vought’s own assertion here, Trump’s administration was an abject failure, considering that he exploded the National Debt..
Full contextual analysis of Section 1.2: Executive Office of the President of the United States here.
Share this quote from Project 2025:
“Not only is the federal government trillions of dollars in debt and unable to afford the more than half a billion dollars squandered on leftist opinion each year, but the government should not be compelling the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own views.”
Wow. You don’t get much clearer in your intentions than that statement. Defuding public broadcasting would result in a number of consequences including educational, cultural and local programming being reduced or canceled; small or rural stations being forced to close, leading to a loss of access to reliable information in underserved areas; public broadcasters might have to turn to commercialized funding to stay afloat, potentially leading to biased and commercial programming that appeals to advertisers rather than the public interest, huge impact on free access to information, and more.
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.5: Media Agencies: U.S. Agency for Global Media & Corporation for Public Broadcasting here.
Share this quote from Project 2025:
“HHS is home to Medicare and Medicaid, the principal drivers of our $31 trillion national debt.”
Are Medicare and Medicaid really the principal drivers of our national debt? Only when you combine them. Social Security by itself is the largest driver, followed by the interest on the national debt, followed by the military, health spending, and Medicare, who are all tied at around 13% of our total spending. (Social Security is 22%, net interest is 14%.) [Source] Veterans’ benefits and services account for 5%.
This statement is laying the groundwork for the writer to argue for cuts to these programs.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“The Biden Administration Treasury Department has failed badly in achieving every one of the agency’s core objectives. The financial affairs of the nation have seldom been in worse condition, with the national debt expanding by more than $4 trillion in Biden’s first two years in office. No President in modern times—perhaps ever—has been more fiscally reckless than has the Biden Administration.”
This is a partially a disingenuous observation, partially a flat-out lie. Biden was stuck cleaning up the pandemic mess and in a recession when he took office. Furthermore, the National Debt did NOT expand by $4 trillion in Biden’s first two years, it was about $1.5 trillion. Trump’s four years, due to tax cuts and COVID, expanded the National Debt by more than $8 trillion, mostly due to tax cuts for the wealthy and his trade wars. [Source]
See Also:
- Donald Trump Built a National Debt So Big (Even Before the Pandemic) That It’ll Weigh Down the Economy For Years
- Trump added twice as much to the national debt as Biden: Analysis
- Trump ran up national debt twice as much as Biden: new analysis
- Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio
The president who added the most to the National Debt by percentage? FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt.) This was due to the Great Depression and the New Deal. After that, Wilson, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Obama, although it’s worthy of note that while Obama and Trump both added about $8 trillion to the National Debt, Trump only took four years to do it, not eight. [Source]
Full contextual analysis of Section 4.2: Department of the Treasury here.
“The Bank’s accounting practices are deficient, and the Bank miscalculates its budget savings. While it claims that its operations will save taxpayers $14 billion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office has found that EXIM programs will actually cost taxpayers $2 billion.”
No, their accounting practices are not “deficient.” There’s a literal difference in accounting practices at work here, both of which are valid.
Ex-Im uses an accounting method called Federal Credit Reform Act (FCRA) accounting, which factors in raw numbers. The Ex-Im claims it generates a surplus for the government because it literally does – this is because the fees and interest paid by foreign buyers (and their lenders) often exceed the cost of providing the financial support.
The Congressional Budget Office uses a method called Fair-Value Accounting, which factors in the risks taxpayers take by backing Ex-Im loans and guarantees. In short, if the considered risks were to actually happen, the Ex-Im’s activities could result in a cost of $2 billion to taxpayers. For de Rugy to claim outright that one method is correct and the other is deficient is disingenuous and misleading. The debate isn’t about who is right, the debate is about whether or not one should account for the full-market risk that taxpayers are exposed to. It’s kind of a glass-half-full v. glass-half-empty scenario.
Full contextual analysis of Section 4.3: Export-Import Bank here.
“This ability to manage risk successfully is why EXIM actually makes a profit for American taxpayers, described in government parlance as “negative subsidy,” sending more than $9 billion to the U.S. Treasury for debt reduction since 1992.”
This is accurate. Here’s that source.
Full contextual analysis of Section 4.3: Export-Import Bank here.