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Both parties are responsible for the inflation and debt. Fiscal policy is largely driven by congress, not the president
by jameslk 10d ago
Both parties are responsible for the inflation and debt. Fiscal policy is largely driven by congress, not the president
- deleted 10d ago[deleted]
- matteoraso 10d agoAnd which party controls congress? I'll give you a hint: It's the party that spent decades advocating for irresponsible tax cuts without cutting spending[0]. [0] Yes, I know that the Republicans said that they were going to cut spending to match the tax cuts, but that never ends up happening.
- jameslk 10d agoThe high inflation since Covid and $40 trillion in debt didn’t happen under one party
- owebmaster 10d agoBut just one wins elections promising they will reducing it
- jameslk 10d agoNeither party has realistic plans to reduce the debt. It’s been that way for decades. Kicking the can down the road gets more votes
- watwut 10d agoIt was democrat who ended with surplus. This is not both sides issue. This very much "conservatives make things worst and hide behind both sides".
- chucksta 10d agoWhat's the other promising to do with it?
- atmavatar 10d agoThe (vast?) majority of the debt happened as the result of the Republican party both increasing spending and cutting taxes every time it lands someone in the White House and before midterms flip the House back to Democrats. There's a fair argument to be made that the Democrats could/should have reversed these disastrous fiscal policies when they gained power, but it's important to be wary of Murc's Law while also acknowledging doing so would also burn a lot of political capital Democrats never seem to have much of. The American electorate is a grade school child constantly evaluating which parent it likes the most. One tells you that you can eat as much candy as you like and play video games all night (neither of which hit you until the following day), while the other occasionally tells you to eat your vegetables, do your homework, and clean your room.
- jameslk 10d ago> The (vast?) majority of the debt happened as the result of the Republican party both increasing spending and cutting taxes every time it lands someone in the White House and before midterms flip the House back to Democrats. Both parties have run an increasing deficit, with the only outlier being a small amount of time in the late 90s. The deficit is largely caused by social security outlays, medicare/medicaid outlays, and military spending, none of which are going to meaningfully change under either party
- sbohacek 10d agoMaybe you mean something different, but not every recent president has "run an increasing deficit" Reagan: +74B Bush: +103B Clinton: -382B Bush: +1.5T Obama: -747B Trump: +2.1T Biden: -1T Where change in deficit is the final budget deficit - starting budget deficit So, every Republican president runs an increasing deficit and every Democrat president runs a decreasing deficit.
- jameslk 10d agoCongress is the one that largely makes the fiscal policy choices. For example, during Clinton’s second term when the deficit was almost eliminated (some claim there was a surplus, but there wasn’t because of social security liabilities), you had a republican controlled congress who were pushing for cuts and fiscal tightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America
- matteoraso 10d agoI'm a lot more sympathetic to Joe Biden temporarily causing a spike in inflation while helping America recover from a horrible pandemic than Republicans habitually running the country off of debt.
- jameslk 10d agoJoe Biden didn’t cause a spike in inflation, congress did. And the policies that caused it wasn’t under Joe Biden’s term Also, inflation wasn’t temporary
- throw0101a 10d ago> The high inflation since Covid and $40 trillion in debt didn’t happen under one party Between his first term and his second term to date (2+ more years to go), Trump is responsible for more that one quarter (29%) of US debt (USD 11.6T / 40T): * https://time.com/article/2026/08/21/national-debt-trump-biden/ https://time.com/article/2026/08/21/national-debt-trump-bide... There was a bit of a mitigating circumstance of COVID (for Trump and Biden), which caused the debt to jump for many countries as well (and not just the US), but it's not like Trump et co are helping the math along with all the tax cuts and asking for a US$ >1T military budget. But I would say a large reason why the US is in the fiscal position it is now in is because of Trump and a GOP Congress. (See also tax cuts under Bush 43 and Reagan; Bush 41 raised them a bit.)
- DoesntMatter22 10d agoPartly it doesn't happen because you can't really get much done even if you have a majority. You really end up needing a super majority. The one thing both parties agree on though is running up a massive deficit
- disgruntledphd2 10d ago> You really end up needing a super majority. Assuming you're talking about the Senate filibuster, then this can be changed or removed by simple majority vote. It's not in the Constitution, just a rule that the Senate adopted. Like, personally I think that even sans filibuster, the Senate would move much slower than the House, because of election cycles.
- UncleOxidant 10d agoThis president single-handedly raised tariffs on goods from all over the world.
- jameslk 10d agoHigh inflation and large debt preceded the tariffs. That said, the tariffs didn’t help either. That’s why I said largely Ultimately the president is enabled or constrained by laws enacted by congress
- RickJWagner 10d agoYes. It is a tax. He raised a tax. You might argue it is inflationary.
- carefree-bob 10d agoBy that logic, interest rate hikes should be inflationary. It is highly unusual to argue that taxation is inflationary since the whole point of inflation is to reduce demand.
- RickJWagner 9d agoThe whole point of inflation is to reduce demand? Please further explain, including your ideas about causes and effects.
- tmountain 10d agoYou might argue it is illegal.
- kccoder 10d agoThe BBB, Iran war, and tariffs, something done solely by republicans, sometimes just the president, are the source of inflation, so you can attribute this situation mostly on Trump, and fully on republicans.
- jameslk 10d agoHigher inflation rates started before any of those, but those things didn’t help
- khriss 10d agoI wonder which party's presidents have started all the trillion dollar wars in the past 30 years.....
- Steltek 10d agoFalse. On an earlier HN economic story, someone provided data showing that this is entirely the responsibility of Republican administrations. Going back to Eisenhower, the Deficit has only increased under Republican Presidents and only decreased under Democratic ones (with one exception, Johnson was slightly positive in Deficit increase). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49714491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49714491
- jameslk 9d agoA rando on the internet that put together a table of presidents and numbers has no bearing on facts, it falsifies nothing Presidents cannot pass fiscal policy. They can only sign or veto new fiscal policies or act on existing policies passed by congress that give them fiscal latitude I’ve explained this many times in this thread. We’ve reached the heat death of useful discussion so this will be my final comment in this thread