Steve Rattner maps out the irresponsible Republican path to uncontrollable deficits and debt.

Steve Rattner uses charts to explain the uncontrollable US debt. My narrative assigns the blame to Republican policies, a fact the mainstream media is scared to address.

Steve Rattner: Budget deficit & debt are a Republican thing

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Summary

The video argues that America’s staggering $36-trillion-plus national debt is the predictable result of deliberate policy choices: massive tax giveaways to the wealthy, catastrophic wars of choice, and failed pandemic leadership, not social investments. It contends that when the government prioritizes plutocrats and militarism over working people, red ink and preventable suffering follow.

• President Clinton handed off a rare budget surplus, but Bush’s 2001-03 tax cuts quickly reversed course and began the debt spiral.
• Two decades of post-9/11 wars—especially Iraq—have already cost roughly $2.9 trillion, with veterans’ care still mounting.
• The Bush and Trump tax cut packages together removed well over $3 trillion in revenue, overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthiest households and corporations.
• Trump’s chaotic pandemic response made a $2.2 trillion relief bill unavoidable and led to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, deepening both the human and fiscal toll.
• Today, the debt equals more than 100 percent of GDP, and interest payments threaten to crowd out vital public investments unless lawmakers raise revenue from those who can best afford it.

A progressive reading views the debt crisis not as an inevitable mathematical problem, but as a moral indictment of trickle-down economics and militarized priorities. Restoring fiscal health, therefore, demands taxing extreme wealth, trimming the Pentagon’s excess, and investing in people-first programs that expand shared prosperity.

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Premium Content (Complimentary)

For over two centuries, Americans have debated the proper role of the government. Yet, the past quarter-century offers an unambiguous lesson: feed the billionaire class and feed the war machine, and the Treasury’s ledger will bleed red ink. When Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001, the nation was running a surplus and on track to pay down debt for the first time since World War II. That trajectory, grounded in moderately higher top tax rates and robust economic growth, reflected a fundamental progressive insight: when those who reap the most benefits from the economy pay a fair share, government can balance its books while meeting public needs.

George W. Bush instantly trashed that consensus. His 2001 and 2003 tax cuts slashed rates on capital gains, dividends, and high salaries—the lifeblood of America’s elite—at an eventual ten-year cost of nearly $3 trillion when debt service is included. Supply-siders promised that giveaways to millionaires would “pay for themselves.” Instead, revenues collapsed, deficits exploded, and Wall Street pocketed the windfall. Compounding the damage, Bush launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on borrowed money. The Iraq theater alone has drained about $2.9 trillion when long-term veterans’ care is counted, a staggering transfer of public wealth to defense contractors and reconstruction profiteers. Those funds could have financed universal pre-K, tuition-free public college, and decarbonized infrastructure—investments that strengthen communities and the economy.

Barack Obama inherited this fiscal wreckage, along with a global financial meltdown engineered by deregulated bankers. His administration did what responsible governments must: stabilize the system and prevent another Great Depression. But the price tag of Wall Street bailouts and stimulus, layered atop Bush-era debt, undercut progressive aims. Conservatives then weaponized the new deficits they created to demand austerity for programs such as food assistance and the social safety net—a textbook example of creating a crisis to justify punishing the poor.

Donald Trump doubled down. In 2017, he rammed through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, adding another $1.5 trillion to deficits while handing 83 percent of the benefits to the wealthiest 1 percent by 2027. Then came COVID-19. Instead of following science—universal masks, test-trace-isolate, and short, targeted lockdowns—Trump waged a culture war against basic public-health measures. A Time-summarized Lancet analysis later estimated that 40 percent of U.S. COVID deaths were preventable with competent leadership. Congress had no choice but to pass the $2.2 trillion CARES Act to keep families and businesses afloat. Progressive economists supported the relief but noted the brutal irony: pandemic spending ballooned deficits because the administration refused to treat public health as public infrastructure.

Today, Treasury records show the debt at roughly $36 trillion—about one full year of U.S. economic output—and rising interest rates will funnel hundreds of billions to bondholders. Yet deficit hawks continue to ignore the revenue side. They rail against “entitlements,” but Social Security and Medicare are prepaid insurance programs, not drivers of the current hole. The real culprits—unpaid-for tax cuts, forever wars, and deregulation that socializes private risk—remain sacred to the political right because they enrich the donor class.

A progressive solution starts by repealing the Trump and remaining Bush cuts, restoring a genuinely progressive tax code with top marginal rates above 40 percent, closing loopholes for capital gains and offshore profits, and enacting a surtax on extreme wealth. Such changes would raise trillions without touching middle-class wallets. Next, Congress must pivot from reflexive militarism to smart diplomacy and climate-resilient infrastructure, trimming at least $200 billion a year from the Pentagon. Finally, investing in universal child care, green manufacturing, and Medicare for All would boost productivity, narrow inequality, and generate broad-based demand—the actual engine of sustainable growth.

The debt is therefore not a mystery of arithmetic; it is a mirror reflecting national values. For decades, policymakers, specifically Republicans, chose tax cuts for tycoons and bombs over bridges. A humane economy demands the opposite: tax justice, peace dividends, and people-centered development. The arithmetic will follow the morality—just as it did in the late 1990s—once Washington commits to governing for the many, not the money.