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Bidenflation? Trumpflation? Try unipartyflation
Republicans spent the 2024 campaign blaming “Bidenflation” on runaway spending and debt-driven inflation. A year into Trump’s second term, the top-line numbers look uncomfortably familiar. Even the New York Times has noticed: “For Mr. Trump, the result is a set of annual government expenses that do not appear radically different on paper compared with what he inherited in January 2025.” Sadly, yes.The rallying cry against “Bidenflation” was probably the most prolific indictment of the last Democrat president, at least next to the canard of the “Biden border invasion.” Implicit in that allegation was a recognition that the record-high debt payments fueling a size of government that dwarfed the Obama-era leviathan (which spawned the Tea Party) were responsible for the great unaffordability crisis.Our policies try to help consumers afford unaffordable prices by fueling more debt — which makes life more unaffordable.The opening weeks of this administration, roughly this time last year, were dominated by Republican officials heralding Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. Red states began forming their own DOGE committees, and every Republican clamored to have his name attached to the spending-cutting club. Someone even launched a meme coin named after DOGE.A year later, nearly the entire debt and spending level of Biden’s final year has been codified by all but the most conservative members of Congress. The body politic barely noticed until the New York Times mentioned it this week. Trump and GOP leaders no longer talk about debt service as a driver of inflation. Worse, some deny inflation even exists.More disconcerting: No real movement on the right even recognizes the severity of the unaffordability crisis or the record deficits still fueling it. The same way many forget Trump’s COVID spending helped catalyze the worst affordability crisis in modern American life, they have conveniently forgotten their own campaign rallies against Biden and Harris.Like his first term, the president proposed a budget for FY 2026 that aimed to downsize bureaucracies and agencies Reagan conservatives never believed should exist. Congress writes the budget, but the president still has a veto pen. He also commands the party that controls both houses, however narrow those majorities.Yet rather than fight for even modest spending cuts, the president worked the phones to pressure conservatives into breaking campaign promises and codifying a budget that enshrined roughly $1.6 trillion in discretionary spending, on top of mandatory spending on interest and entitlements that rises every year.RELATED: The debt bomb is ticking, and DC spent the blast shield Artoleshko / Getty ImagesWhereas the president’s budget promised to cut the Department of Housing and Urban Development nearly in half, the appropriations bill he ultimately supported increased HUD’s budget by 9%. He also supports a new housing bill that would expand HUD’s “affordable housing” programs further. He promised to trim the departments of Agriculture and Commerce by 23% and 16%, yet wound up increasing their budgets by 2% and 7% respectively. Labor, HHS, and the Small Business Administration were slated for 28%-38% cuts under his proposed budget, yet the FY 2026 bill he lobbied for and signed kept their record budgets roughly the same.Ironically, every agency his base hates is now flush with cash and fully funded for the remainder of the fiscal year — except the Department of Homeland Security, which faces an indefinite lapse in appropriations.Gross debt has increased by $2.6 trillion since Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025. What happened to the concern about debt-driven inflation that the right raised relentlessly when Biden spent at these levels? Does elephant dung taste better than donkey manure? What gives?On this trajectory, by 2030 at the latest, the public share of our debt will surpass its all-time high of 106%. That level came at the height of World War II, when debt at least aimed at victory and production. Today’s debt is unproductive. The government goes into debt to juice up private debt to produce fake things like data centers — or worse, self-perpetuating dependency. Today’s spending programs, and even the Trump tax cuts (as opposed to his first-term tax bill), do not produce more goods. They induce more demand for the same goods. In the long run, that’s inflationary.RELATED: Washington printed promises. Gold called the bluff. Alfexe / Getty ImagesOur policies try to help consumers afford unaffordable prices by fueling more debt — which makes life more unaffordable.Remember: We’re at the peak of the debt mountain while still sitting in the valley of an impending unemployment crisis. As the economy worsens, spending on food stamps, Medicaid, and unemployment will compound the cycle of debt, inflation, unaffordability, and dependency.It gets worse. By reinstating earmarks, Republicans countermanded the one major spending success of the past decade forged by the Tea Party. The full-funding bill for FY 2026 that Trump signed contained $15.5 billion in earmarks.Earmarks themselves don’t drive inflation, but they create a legislative dynamic where members get bought off to vote for the leviathan spending that does. The omnibus contained 8,471 earmarks for just 535 members. It becomes nearly impossible to muster opposition when personal favors designed to ingratiate lawmakers to local interests ride along in the same bills.No surprise, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wound up with nearly $500 million in earmarks, the most of any member. As ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, she helped spearhead this uniparty budget that kept the status quo.Some GOP apologists will scoff at the idea of dealing with inflation and demand we focus on other issues. They might pretend fiscal conservatism was never real.Fine. But the next time Democrats take office, shut your mouths about spending and inflation. And don’t campaign on bringing it down.
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