Editors at Issues and Insights ask why media reports about the Trump administration’s government efficiency initiative omit an important fact.
The next time you hear someone complaining that DOGE is “slashing” federal spending or “dismantling” the government, pay close attention. There will almost certainly be an important fact left out: The gargantuan federal deficit.
Every day brings a new sob story about how someone is being hurt by Elon Musk’s chainsaw because some federal program is being shut down, or because a precious federal job has been axed.
Never in any of these is any context provided. And in this case, context is everything.
By the time President Donald Trump took office – four months into the new fiscal year (which started last October), the federal government was already $840 billion in the red. That’s a 58% increase from the prior year.
If all goes well, the deficit for this year will total $1.9 trillion, according to the Treasury Department, which would be the third annual increase.
The result is that the national debt is now $37 trillion – more than double what it was a decade ago. Interest on the debt took off like a rocket under Joe Biden.None of this is sustainable.
And if anyone suggests to you that Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are to blame, they aren’t.
This year, revenues will equal 18.7% of the nation’s GDP. That’s well above the postwar average of 17.2% – and it is a level that has been topped only seven times in the past 80 years.
Too much spending, not too little taxation, is the problem.
This year, federal spending is on course to equal 25% of GDP, which is significantly higher than the 20% postwar average, and a level topped only twice since World War II – (both times because of massive COVID spending).
