Well, yes and no. We can see that during his administration the deficit was already increasing quite a bit in relative terms even before the pandemic.
> When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that federal budget deficits would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump’s term. Instead, the deficit reached nearly 4% of gross domestic product in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019.
> There were multiple culprits. Trump’s tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, took a big bite out of federal revenue. The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.
COVID-19 certainly didn't help, and you are correct that stimulus was largely bipartisan, but in common discussion "blame" for spending is usually assigned to the president and their administration. This can be observed by current members of Congress (Republicans) who have been quick to suggest that Biden has created a huge deficit, inflation, etc. while it's not only untrue but was largely due to actions from the previous administration or Congress before he was president. (In other words for every representative complaining about inflation they should be posting that they were the ones who actually voted for it).
If we were being truthful we wouldn't do this, but if we're going to continue to suggest that the deficit is (whatever insane things people are making up right now to blame Biden on) then it would make no sense to not instead blame any financial problems on the previous administration and keep assigning blame to the President.
W.r.t COVID-19 you can just say the Trump administration did a terrible job and mishandled allocations of money and that's why the deficit increased so much. I personally don't wholly subscribe to that but if Republicans are going to blame inflation on Biden it makes sense to turn around and blame it all on Trump/Republicans instead.
It's obvious Biden and congress are not primarily responsible for inflation, that's a combination of macro economic factors as well as the Federal Reserve's drastic actions.
But not only did the COVID stimulus continue once the dems took control, they continued to pass multi-trillion dollar bills (Infrastructure & Inflation Reduction Act) along with a half trillion dollar student loan forgiveness. It's this aggressive spending, while inflation was already rising, that is giving them that reputation.
I'm not taking sides here nor do I want anything to do with Trump. Just laying it out how I see it.
Spending can be an investment too, so I think broadly characterizing them as spending bills is misleading which makes the characterization of "Democrat inflation" also misleading. An easy example is the national highway system which was a spending bill, yet we reaped massive (although problematic in my opinion) economic gain from doing so.
I'm conflicted on student loan forgiveness, but I don't see it as any worse than numerous corporate subsidies and bailouts, and is likely a better use of money than what we normally spend. If this forgiveness bill proceeds forward as it is likely to do, I think coupling it with a measured withdrawal of the federal government from guaranteeing student loans and also allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy would be ideal.
Except in this case "investment" is more like buying a stock at it's peak maxing out your margin with a variable interest rate in a rising interest rate environment.
> When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that federal budget deficits would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump’s term. Instead, the deficit reached nearly 4% of gross domestic product in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019.
> There were multiple culprits. Trump’s tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, took a big bite out of federal revenue. The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.
COVID-19 certainly didn't help, and you are correct that stimulus was largely bipartisan, but in common discussion "blame" for spending is usually assigned to the president and their administration. This can be observed by current members of Congress (Republicans) who have been quick to suggest that Biden has created a huge deficit, inflation, etc. while it's not only untrue but was largely due to actions from the previous administration or Congress before he was president. (In other words for every representative complaining about inflation they should be posting that they were the ones who actually voted for it).
If we were being truthful we wouldn't do this, but if we're going to continue to suggest that the deficit is (whatever insane things people are making up right now to blame Biden on) then it would make no sense to not instead blame any financial problems on the previous administration and keep assigning blame to the President.
W.r.t COVID-19 you can just say the Trump administration did a terrible job and mishandled allocations of money and that's why the deficit increased so much. I personally don't wholly subscribe to that but if Republicans are going to blame inflation on Biden it makes sense to turn around and blame it all on Trump/Republicans instead.