Tax cuts and pandemic relief measures enacted during the Trump administration added $8.4 trillion to the national debt over the 10-year budget window, according to a study released Wednesday by a top budget watchdog group.
Discretionary spending increases from 2018 and 2019 added $2.1 trillion, Trump’s signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act added $1.9 trillion and the 2020 bipartisan CARES Act for pandemic relief added another $1.9 trillion, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a Washington think tank, found in a study released earlier this month.
“Of the $8.4 trillion President Trump added to the debt, $3.6 trillion came from COVID relief laws and executive orders, $2.5 trillion from tax cut laws, and $2.3 trillion from spending increases, with the remaining executive orders having costs and savings that largely offset each other,” budget experts with the CRFB wrote in a summary of the report.
The only significant deficit reduction enacted by the Trump administration noted in the report was due to tariffs levied on a variety of imported goods, which are calculated to have brought in $445 billion over 10 years.
Okay, so obviously it has to come from the top officially. Unofficially, in the DC area, which is the region where I have personal knowledge of what happened, it was local pressure. The administration probably got the same nationally, hence the universal decision.
Edit: Plus, as the article says, OPM was willing to let agencies do whatever they want. The Biden administration got involved as Republicans introduced legislation to force RTO. So I guess I missed that part of it.
What local pressure?
We’re talking about federal workers, GSA owns their buildings. So you can’t mean property owners.
You think local restaurants missed the lunch breaks of federal workers so much that Biden caved to them and did something everyone disagrees with?
And that’s better?
Hell, the vast majority of federal workers eat in their cafeterias and those are still operated by small contracts that were signed during COVID… So you can’t possibly mean they’re the ones pressuring Biden, return to office means agencies are looking for any excuse to cut their contracts because they can’t handle the influx
I have no idea what you’re trying to say, or where your “personal knowledge” is coming from.