The Patriot Post® · What's a Few Trillion Bucks Among Friends?

$34,000,000,000,000 doesn’t even seem like a real number. It sounds like a grade schooler yelling out “34 bajillion” in a silly effort to top his classmates. Yet on Tuesday the U.S. national debt really did exceed 34 trillion dollars, just three months after topping $33 trillion.

We’d say our great-great-grandchildren will “thank” us for it, except the bill for such reckless federal spending will come a lot sooner than that.

In 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress led by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell passed the impressive Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which President Donald Trump gladly signed. The law cut tax rates across the board, contrary to leftist lies about “tax cuts for the rich.” It also expanded deductions to ensure that more of your hard-earned money was protected from government pickpockets.

It set off an economic boom that was only blunted by government tyrants shutting down vast swaths of the economy at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. And even then, by the end of 2020, a major recovery was underway because the economy was so strong before the pandemic. (Imagine where we’d be if President Hillary Clinton had had three years to keep us in Barack Obama’s economic doldrums.)

Did we mention that after those 2017 tax cuts federal revenue increased drastically? The naysayers falsely insisted that cutting tax rates would “cost” the government trillions of dollars. Revenue increased from $3.32 trillion in 2017 to $4.44 trillion in 2023.

Revenue was up as a percentage of GDP, too. “The federal government collected the equivalent of 20 percent of GDP in 2022,” notes National Review’s Dominic Pino, “well above the 50-year average of 17 percent.”

Most of us could only wish for such “costs” in our paychecks.

More importantly, the entire “cost” formulation for tax cuts depends on two things: accounting gimmicks, and the fundamental statist presupposition that the money belongs to the government in the first place and you’re just allowed to keep some of it. That’s a sinister lie, and too many Americans fall for it.

Unfortunately, those tax cuts sunset in 2025, and, thanks to that “cost” lie, preventing the resulting tax increase is going to be an uphill battle.

The biggest factor is that skyrocketing federal revenue was exceeded by spending that soared even higher. Last year’s deficit was nearly $2 trillion even with all that additional revenue because “emergency” COVID spending effectively created a new floor for the federal budget. The government spent $4.95 trillion in 2017, which rose to $7.73 trillion in 2020 before settling back slightly to $6.13 trillion in 2023.

Remember when Biden repeatedly bragged about achieving “the largest debt reduction in American history”? Fun times.

The result of the spending bonanza: The federal debt was $20 trillion in 2017 and now exceeds $34 trillion.

Throughout the presidential election season, Democrats will argue that we “can’t afford” more Republican tax cuts “for the wealthy.” They’ll blame Trump for the debt, too. While he certainly played his part by presiding over an additional nearly $7 trillion in debt, Democrats are asserting something that the “fact-checkers” might say is “missing context.”

First of all, for his final two years, Trump worked with a Democrat-controlled Congress bent on jacking up spending during the pandemic — when they weren’t impeaching him. Second, Obama hiked the debt by well over $7 trillion, and Joe Biden is also well on his way to exceeding $7 trillion. It’s apparently the new normal.

Just before the New Year, Biden’s social media team boasted of his accomplishments in 2023, and the list included some relevant lies. He claimed to have “tackled inflation & lowered costs,” as well as that he “invested in America & created good jobs.”

He caused inflation with rampant spending, which then made that spending even more expensive, compounding the effect. He happened to occupy the Oval Office when most of the jobs lost during COVID were restored. That’s not “creating” anything, though he did spend a lot of money for an empty boast.

Roughly 60% of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy, and the only reason it’s not 90% is rank partisanship. Eyes may glaze over at the mention of the federal debt, but it plays an enormous role in our economic well-being. It’s why the average family needs an extra $11,000 just to afford the same standard of living as in 2021.

Here’s hoping more Americans realize the connection before a new, much higher tax bill comes due.