Trump and congressional Democrats' budget agreement could add $1.7 trillion to the soaring federal debt

While the agreement has still not been signed into law by Trump, the broad outline of the $1.37 trillion budget deal reflects an evolution in Washington's approach to federal spending.
Though Trump called himself " the king of debt" and promised to wipe out the national debt in eight years during his 2016 campaign, his budget priorities have continued to rise the federal debt.
The federal debt now stands at over $22.5 trillion.
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The new budget agreement reached by President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats could add over $1.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to a projection by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan research organization.

The budget bill's estimated cost is nearly that of the Trump administration's 2017 tax cuts, which cost around $1.9 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office reported last year.

Under the deal reached by Trump and congressional Democrats, federal spending is slated to increase by $320 billion over two years above limits established in a 2011 budget law effectively getting rid of them. The agreement also raises the level of discretionary spending to nearly $2 trillion over the next decade with significant boosts in both domestic and military spending.

The deal includes only $77 billion in offsets, just half of the spending cuts the White House was pushing for. And it also removes the threat of a US default and a government shutdown in the fall.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget blasted the deal in a press release on Monday, calling it "a total abdication of fiscal responsibility by Congress and the President" and the "worst budget deal in our nation's history."

While the agreement still faces votes in the House and Senate before reaching Trump's desk for his signature, the broad outline of the $1.37 trillion deal reflects an evolution in Washington's approach to federal spending.

Both parties have shown little appetite to adopt spending cuts during a time of sustained economic growth and government spending is soaring, thanks in part to the cost of an aging population drawing more benefits from programs like Social Security and Medicare. The federal debt now stands at over $22.5 trillion.

Though Trump called himself " the king of debt" and promised to wipe out the federal debt in eight years during his 2016 campaign, his budget priorities have taken the federal government in the opposite direction. The administration's tax cuts have contributed to a slide in tax revenue instead of paying for itself in the form of robust economic growth. That's ended up helping to swell the deficit by around 15% for each fiscal year Trump has been in office.

Trump advisors have shifted tone from deficit hawks to nonchalance about fiscal restraint and the national debt. Larry Kudlow, head of the Trump administration's National Economic Council, said recently the national debt was "quite manageable" and "not a huge problem right now at all" in an optimistic assessment on the ballooning national debt.

Last week, the White House Office of Management and Budget projected that the federal deficit for 2019 would reach $1 trillion, the only time the nation's deficit has exceeded that level barring the Great Recession.

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