Can Trump fix the national debt? Republican senators, many investors and even Elon Musk are skeptical (2025)
www.pbs.org
... President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Republican senators, global investors, voters and even Elon Musk that he won't bury the federal government in debt with his multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package.
The response so far from financial markets has been skeptical as Trump seems unable to trim deficits as promised. ...
"All of this rhetoric about cutting trillions of dollars of spending has come to nothing " and the tax bill codifies that," said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. "There is a level of concern about the competence of Congress and this administration and that makes adding a whole bunch of money to the deficit riskier."
The White House has viciously lashed out at anyone who has voiced concern about the debt snowballing under Trump, even though it did exactly that in his first term after his 2017 tax cuts.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt opened her briefing Thursday by saying she wanted "to debunk some false claims" about his tax cuts. ...
Council chair Stephen Miran told reporters that when the growth being forecast by the White House is coupled with expected revenues from tariffs, the expected budget deficits will fall. The tax cuts will increase the supply of money for investment, the supply of workers and the supply of domestically produced goods -- all of which, by Miran's logic, would cause faster growth without creating new inflationary pressures.
"I do want to assure everyone that the deficit is a very significant concern for this administration," Miran said.
White House budget director Russell Vought told reporters the idea that the bill is "in any way harmful to debt and deficits is fundamentally untrue." ...
[emphasis mine]
