Although President Joe Biden is on pace to breach a $1 trillion deficit, Democrats are still blaming the previous administration.
Cornered in a press gaggle outside the Capitol, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was asked by reporters if Democrats spending too much over the last two years, while they held a majority in both Congressional Chambers and held control of the White House, was to blame for reaching the debt ceiling.
In response to the question, Ocasio-Cortez asserted that the “largest contributor to the debt ceiling, to our deficit, has been the Trump tax cuts.”
The U.S. national debt has ballooned to $31.4 trillion and continues to proliferate under the Biden administration.
The government’s annual operating budget currently sits at $6.3 billion, nearly $2 billion more than the yearly budget before the pandemic.
In 2017, when then-President Donald Trump cut taxes, the Congressional Budget Office projected tax revenues would drop by $1.1 trillion over the next decade.
Yet, CBO projections released in 2022 show that the government is on track to spend $570 billion more than the shrinkage in tax revenue for the 2018 – 2027 period.
According to reporting by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the government will still overspend by $70 billion when figures are adjusted for inflation.
The debt ceiling has come into focus since the government reached its limit on January 19. Now, the Treasury Department has implemented a host of emergency measures to avoid a default and buy the government time to raise the debt ceiling.
