Day 634: Trump, Republicans talk big about economy and curbing national debt, but do nothing about it

The number of Republicans who believe themselves to be principled and proclaim that fiscal responsibility is of paramount importance seems endless. The Bob Corkers, the Ben Sasses, the Mike Lees and the Rand Pauls of the world love to tout balanced budgets at every turn. Donald Trump proclaimed that national debt would be eliminated within eight years.

At the same time, Trump swears that the U.S. economy has never been better and will only continue to grow.

With Republicans controlling the presidency, Senate and House of Representatives, the time feels ripe for the GOP to uphold their long-claimed promise.

But they’ve shown no such interest. In fact, the opposite has been true.

With the fiscal year coming to a close, the national debt has risen $1.613 trillion — more than 8 percent — since Trump took office, and there’s no end in sight. Some estimates show Trump planning on adding more than $8 trillion more to the national debt. While the debt rose under Barack Obama, that was understandable considering the perilous nature of financial institutions and the need for the government to borrow and spend significant money to rescue a bottomed-out economy.

In 2018, things are booming. Just ask Trump. He brags about the strength of the economy nearly every day (and ignores Obama’s work so that he can pretend he’s the only one that caused it to spike).

After two straight fiscal years of rising debt — debt that will only continue to dramatically rise — it seems obvious that Republicans only seem to care about it when Democrats are in power.

634 days in, 828 to go

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