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An economic adviser to Donald Trump said Thursday that he’ll counsel Trump to prioritize increased energy production and making 2017’s tax cuts permanent — plus one issue that the GOP platform skates around.
“I liked the platform, but there’s not much talk about fiscal responsibility and cutting government spending, so I’d like to see more of an emphasis on that than in the first term,” said Stephen Moore, a senior visiting fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation.
“I think Biden has a much worse record on the debt than Trump does, but Trump in some ways could be a big spender himself, so I hope that he becomes more fiscally conscious,” Moore told MarketWatch, while speaking on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Jason Trennert, CEO and chairman of Strategas Securities, expressed a similar hopeful sentiment, when asked if he expects Trump would be different in a second term after not being much of a fiscal hawk in his first term.
“I do, simply because of the starting point. We’re starting at a much more precarious time right now,” Trennert said, as he also spoke on the sidelines of the GOP convention. Trennert noted the national debt was under $20 trillion when Trump came into office in 2017, but it’s now nearly $35 trillion.
Regarding the increase in the debt, the Strategas CEO said a “not insignificant part of that was COVID.”
“But the spending that’s been taking place after COVID has ended — you’re looking at budget deficits that are enormous, so that’s why I’m hopeful that the new administration would focus more on this,” he told MarketWatch.
From MarketWatch’s archives (April 2020): How the U.S. government is spending trillions in response to the COVID crisis — in one chart
The 2024 platform from Trump and his fellow Republicans, which was released last week, makes references to slashing or “reining in” wasteful spending, but otherwise disappointed some fiscal hawks. A column from the National Review, a conservative magazine, said the GOP platform was “discouraging” for anyone worried about the ballooning debt and its implications.
A report last year from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, estimated that the legislation and executive actions signed by Trump added $7.8 trillion in 10-year budget deficits.
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