USA IOU. Brother, Can You Spare a Trillion?
Team Biden saw an opportunity.
Stumping in Milwaukee on Wednesday, Biden swatted his predecessor when he said, "Just this week, former President Donald Trump said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are on the table. I want to assure you I will never allow it to happen."
As a candidate in the 2016 election, Trump offered that he could pay down the then-$19 trillion national debt during his hoped-for two terms in office.
Instead, Trump oversaw spending that drove up the national IOU -- both before COVID and after, when any president would have pumped truckloads of money into the economy to avoid catastrophe.
During Trump's tenure, the deficit rose by $7.8 trillion -- more than it did under any non-wartime president, The Washington Post and ProPublica found in 2021.
Big media aren't all over this story, so there's no pressure on candidates to talk about a reasonable path to fiscal sanity.
I don't get it. If I were a young voter with a long future before me, I'd be in a rage. I'd press the 81-year-old president and his 77-year-old rival to explain how much longer the overspending can last.
The answer, alas, is that the spending spree only has to last for their careers. Then it's someone else's problem.
Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.
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