The president isn’t the only one to blame for U.S. debts

President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin leave the Treasury building in D.C. on April 21, 2017. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

In her Oct. 6 Tuesday Opinion essay, “The debt is huge because Trump kept his promises,” Maya MacGuineas argued the case made in the headline. But there’s more to it than kept promises. More fundamentally, the debt is huge because the Republican Party, which once claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility, is no longer serious about it. It’s huge because Republicans perpetuated the fantasy that tax cuts would pay for themselves. And it’s also huge because President Trump failed to keep his campaign promises, however absurd, that Mexico would pay for the wall and that he would eliminate the debt in eight years.  

David Berry, Annandale

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