The promise of a debt restraint compromise between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy could end weeks of negotiations and threats of economic disaster in the United States.
News broke Saturday that the two men had agreed in principle to a deal that would raise the country’s debt ceiling for two years and reduce federal spending. A build-up on the debt ceiling without significant spending cuts.
Amid the end of the stalemate, a Democratic state lawmaker took to Twitter claiming the president’s predecessor helped lead the country into its current debt crisis, claiming that Donald Trump promised and failed to deliver on the national debt.
A tweet via Steven Woodrow, a Democratic member of the Colorado House of Representatives, posted on May 28, 2023 and viewed 319,700 times, claimed that Trump had committed to the national debt entirely.
The tweet read: “Trump: added $7. 8 trillion in four years after pledging debt in full.
“They’re just ‘fiscal conservatives’ when a Democrat is in the White House. Otherwise, they are complete. “
Facts
Newsweek recently investigated some other claims about Trump’s contribution to the national debt, claiming that the former president “accumulated” 40% of his term.
Although Trump oversaw a 40% increase in the figure at the beginning of his term, about a portion of that increase came in the last 10 months of his presidency as the United States responded to the COVID pandemic.
Spending for the US COVID reactionIt has won bipartisan support.
Again, the claim about Trump here is strictly false, but it omits the main points that contextualize the claim.
As the Washington Post reports, Trump said in 2016 that he would get rid of the debt (more than $19 trillion at the time) “over an eight-year period. “
This, of course, assumed that Trump would remain in the White House for more than one term, an ambition that materialized.
During his tenure, Trump added $7. 8 trillion to the national debt, far from the elimination he expected.
However, as explained in Newsweek’s previous fact-check, some of that debt grew over the past 10 months as the U. S. moved down. The U. S. responded to COVID.
Woodrow’s tweet makes no mention of unforeseen and unprecedented COVID spending, which won bipartisan at the time, or that Trump’s plan was to eliminate debt for 8 years.
It was already a daunting task when he took office in 2016, it’s unclear how Trump would have brought the debt under control by adding about $8 trillion to it in his first term alone.
However, Woodrow’s tweet does not address the main points of Trump’s plans, nor does it address the average amount of spending Democrats have supported to address public health and the economic emergency posed by COVID.
So, while it’s not unfair to say Trump planned the debt and didn’t, the terms of the former president’s request aren’t spelled out here.
Newsweek left a voicemail with Woodrow asking for comment.
The decision
It requires context.
Although Trump has said he plans to cancel the debt entirely, the tweet omits that the plan was hatched early in his presidency to run for two terms, confident that he would win a momentary term.
It’s also worth noting that while Trump oversaw a 40% accumulation of the national debt, some of that accumulation occurred in the last 10 months of his presidency as the country responded to the COVID pandemic. Spending this era won bipartisan support.
FACT CHECKING BY Newsweek’s fact-checking team