Former President Trump ran up the national debt by about twice as much as President Biden, according to a new analysis.

  • cybersandwich@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 days ago

    How much did covid spending add to the debt?

    Trump’s a clown and I hope he’s tossed in prison, but can we lay all of this at his feet?

    • Coffee Addict@lemmy.worldOPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      This is a fair question, so I did some extra digging.

      It’s important to note that Trump was president for about 9 or 10 months of the pandemic, and Biden was president until it ended. Consequently, they both spent money on Covid relief. In addition to the article posted above (which shows Trump at 3.6 trillion and Biden at 2.1 trillion for Covid spending) I found the below:

      According to this NY Times article from March 2022, there was about $5 trillion in pandemic-related stimulus. But, I did not see a breakdown for which administration spent how much.

      However, I did find this article from ProPublica from January 2021 which indicates that Trump spent about $3 trillion. Assuming both articles are correct, that means Biden would have spent about $2 trillion on Covid as of March 2022.

      So Axios’s numbers roughly check out.