Trump Bets Growth Against $40 Trillion Debt

Smetters argues the White House has the causality backwards. "People often get the causality kind of opposite," he told Fortune. "They think more growth, less of a debt problem, and in reality, it's just the opposite … We deal with the debt issue in order to try to aid economic growth, not vice versa."

He said Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid blunt the benefit of any growth surge, because the initial calculation of Social Security benefits includes productivity growth on top of inflation. "Hypothetically, even if we double the impact of, say, AI on productivity, it barely moves the balance because the initial benefits go up," he said.

The Washington Examiner, in an editorial, blamed spending rather than revenue. It noted that in 2001 the federal government spent $1.86 trillion and collected $1.99 trillion, a $128 billion surplus, while today it is set to spend $7.5 trillion and take in $5.4 trillion — a roughly $2 trillion shortfall. Over that span, the paper wrote, revenue grew 171% and spending grew 303%. Since 2001, it said, Medicare spending is up 392%, Medicaid about 453% and Social Security 287%, while net interest has gone from about $206 billion to more than $1 trillion.

Democrats put the blame on the other side of the ledger. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, posted: "REMINDER: The single biggest driver of our national debt for the last 25 YEARS have been Republican-led tax cuts." Writing for MS NOW, Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, argued that without the Bush and Trump tax cuts the debt-to-GDP ratio would be declining indefinitely, and that long-term spending has actually come in below what was projected the last time the budget was on a stable path.