Donald J. Trump, the most recent Republican president, a businessman who campaigned against the overspending of the Obama administration, left the US deficit larger than at any point in US history.

Donald Trump's Out of Control Spending? One of the most illogical quirks of US political discourse is the Republican-led idea that conservative administrations trend toward a balanced budget, whereas Democrats trend toward a greater national debt.

The idea has gained traction amongst the general public because the idea makes sense on its face: conservatives preach smaller government and less government spending; liberals preach bigger government and more government spending.

But the conservative-are-better-for-the-budget idea doesn’t hold up against modern history.

The last president to balance the budget was William J. Clinton, a Democrat.

Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump, the most recent Republican president, a businessman who campaigned against the overspending of the Obama administration, left the US deficit larger than at any point in US history.

“One of President Donald Trump’s lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch,” ProPublica reported. “The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt.”

Remarkable, given that a core promise of Donald Trump’s campaign was to pay off the national deficit within eight years of taking office.

Donald Trump and the national debt

“The U.S. national debt has continued to climb over the years with each president, as different national and global events have affected debt,” Investopedia reported.

So the mounting national debt is not singularly a Trump problem; his administration is consistent with a trend – but don’t let conservatives tell you national debt is a liberal thing.

During the four short years Trump was in office, the national debt rose almost $7.8 trillion.

To put that number in perspective, that’s almost double the cumulative debt that Americans owe on student loans, car loans, credit cards, and other miscellaneous debts (excluding mortgages), according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Split evenly amongst the population, Trump’s debt accrual breaks down to $23,500 per person, for every single American citizen.

“The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by a leading Washington budget maven, Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center,” ProPublica reported.

Don’t blame the pandemic

The national debt spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic. And although “economists agree that we needed massive deficit spending during the COVID-19 crisis to ward off an economic cataclysm,” Trump had already made a series of decisions that contributed to the US deficit.

“The combination of Trump’s 2017 tax cut and the lack of any serious spending restraint helped both the deficit and the debt soar. So when the once-in-a-lifetime viral disaster slammed our country and we threw more than $3 trillion into COVID-19-related stimulus, there was no longer any margin for error,” ProPublica reported.

Now, the debt to GDP ration is the highest it’s been since World War II.

But now, we have “the massive financial overhang” of Medicare and Social Security, which didn’t exist yet in the 1940s – so our contemporary position is worse off.

Liberal criticisms of the Trump administration often hinge upon trivialities, like, Trump was mean. Or Trump was rude.

Or Trump was belligerent.

But as Trump trends towards his third consecutive GOP nomination, liberals may want to find more substantive critiques of Trump, lest he win a second term. Trump’s record on the national deficit may be a good place to start.

The Biggest Threat To America Isn’t Donald Trump or Joe Biden

Much has been made lately about the peril of American democracy. The January 6th “coup,” the rise of MAGA, and Russian influence on U.S. elections – all are described as existential threats to democracy itself.

The biggest threat: A Plutocracy –  Much has been made lately about the peril of American democracy.

The January 6th “coup,” the rise of MAGA, and Russian influence on U.S. elections – all are described as existential threats to democracy itself.

But contemporary discussions about threats to U.S. democracy make a sweeping assumption: that America still is a democracy.

The premise has been suggested – and supported without much effort – that the U.S. is no longer a democracy.

Not in the purest sense anyway.

Rather, in functional terms, the U.S. has come to be a plutocracy – a “government by the wealthy.” 

Back to the Roots of Democracy

In a democracy, “the masses broadly determine their future.” In a democracy, each individual has “one vote” so to speak, meaning that each person has equal say and equal influence over their government. In the most technical terms, U.S. citizens still enjoy one vote per person, sure. But in functional terms, the say or influence a U.S. citizen has over their government equates to their income level. 

Here is a simple litmus test to emphasize the point: Whose political will is more determinative? Yours or Mark Zuckerberg’s? Oprah Winfrey’s? Peter Thiel’s? Charles Koch’s?

I won’t speak for you but I know full well that my vote doesn’t quite have the reach of Peter Thiel’s.

And the result, of someone like me not having the political clout comparable to Zuckerberg or Thiel, is that my interests are neglected, while their interests are nourished.

Has America Strayed from Democracy?

“Today, when working class or even middle class Americans have to compete with the affluent elites, they are not competing on a level playing field,” Kishore Mahbubani wrote. “They have to run uphill to score goals. By contrast, the affluent elites run downhill as the playing field is tilted in their favor.”

Journalist Anand Giridharadas addressed the issue in his timely book Winners Take All.

“A successful society is a progress machine. It takes in the raw material of innovations and produces broad human advancement. America’s machine is broken,” Giridharadas wrote. “When the fruits of change have fallen on the United States in recent decades, the very fortunate have basketed almost all of them.”

He lists several examples, including the fact the income of the top ten percent of Americans has more than doubled since 1980; the top one percent’s income has tripled; the top 0.001 percent has increased 700 percent; meanwhile, the income for the bottom half of Americans, half of the entire country’s populations, has not moved an inch.

“These familiar figures amount to three and a half decades worth of wondrous, head-spinning change with zero impact on the average pay of 117 million Americans.”  

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz wrote a 2011 Vanity Fair article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%,” which made a similar assessment, noting that the top one percent of Americans are raking up about a quarter of America’s income every year. With respect to wealth, the top one percent control about 40 percent. Just a quarter century ago, the top one percent raked up “just” 12 percent of the nation’s income and controlled “just” 33 percent of the nation’s wealth. 

“Eventually, these inequalities will enable those better situated to exercise a larger influence over the development of legislation,” Mahbubani wrote.

Obviously, what Mahbubani describes has already been happening for decades. Zuckerberg, Koch, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos – they all have outsized political influence.

In principle, their outsized political influence is a problem: it violates the basic tenets of democracy. In practice, “their” outsized political influence is used to – above all things – preserve and augment their own personal wealth – which of course comes at the expense of the majority’s wealth and self-interest.

I know I’m speaking generally about the elite and their interests and their political ambitions – but for the most part, the point stands. Jim Walton’s political interests cut against your political interests. And Jim Walton has a significantly higher ability to exert his political interests than you have of exerting your political interests.

That’s not democracy.