William L. Kovacs

September 7, 2026

Every Republican president and most Republican congressional candidates since Calvin Coolidge have advocated reducing the national debt. Calvin Coolidge was the only Republican president to cut the budget by one-third during his term in office and achieve a budget surplus. Since then, every president has added to the national debt. Jimmy Carter was the last president to leave office with a national debt under $1 trillion.

President Ronald Reagan, perhaps the most vocal critic of the national debt, still added $1.86 trillion to it through his tax cuts. Every Republican since Reagan has added more than a trillion dollars to the national debt during their term.

When calculating the national debt by fiscal year, Republicans have added slightly more than Democratic presidents. The chart below illustrates the change in the National Debt by Presidential Administration on a fiscal year basis.

All figures are in trillions of dollars, unless otherwise noted.

Ronald Reagan	1982–1989	R	+1.86
George H. W. Bush	1990–1993	R	+1.55
Bill Clinton	1994–2001	D	+1.40
George W. Bush	2002–2009	R	+5.85
Barack Obama	2010–2017	D	+8.60
Donald Trump (45)	2018–2021	R	+8.20	Actual FY data
Joe Biden	2022–2025	D	+7.20	Estimated / near-final
Donald Trump (47)	2026–2029	R	+4.30	CBO estimate (projected)

Overall, between President Reagan and the end of Trump’s first term, Republicans have added $17.46 trillion, while Democrats have added $17.20 trillion. If current projections hold, Trump will add another $4.3 trillion in his second term. In that case, Republican presidents will have added $21.76 trillion to the national debt, against the Democrats’ $17.20 trillion.

To illustrate how far off projections can be, the CBO estimated that when Trump leaves office in January 2029, the national debt will be $39-$40 trillion. Unfortunately, the national debt has already hit $40 trillion in the first twenty months of the Trump administration. Trump alone will have added $12.5 trillion to the debt, or 31% of the entire national debt.

The cumulative debt is the core issue. Annual deficits often dominate political debate, but they obscure the problem’s true scale. What ultimately constrains a nation is not a single year’s borrowing, but the total accumulation of debt over time. From Reagan forward, the debt accelerated sharply and sustainedly, showing that today’s debt crisis is the consequence of decades of compounding decisions.

The national debt has a very significant impact on interest payments. Before the Reagan administration, the U.S. had a long period of relative stability in borrowing, with interest payments under $200 billion annually. In the last 46 years, the cumulative debt has become a danger to the country. At current levels, interest on the national debt is no longer a secondary budget item; it is becoming one, if not the largest, of the federal government’s expenditures.

Taken together, the debt and interest payments reveal the true nature of the problem confronting the Republic. Over successive administrations, both parties have allowed the national debt to compound to levels unseen in American history, and interest costs—once manageable—are now accelerating rapidly. This trajectory is not the result of any single president or political ideology. It is the consequence of a federal government that has abandoned its fiduciary duty to control spending, borrowing, and long-term obligations. Left unchecked, rising debt and interest costs will increasingly dictate national policy, leaving future lawmakers with fewer choices and the nation at near collapse.

The political Left looks at the national debt differently. It argues that the Republican tax cuts under the Bush and Trump administrations are primarily to blame since “spending increases relative to the old [CBO] outlook that were previously budgeted for when they actually came in below expectations.” More succinctly, the political Left argues that spending is lower than budgeted for, and lower tax revenues caused the increase in the debt.

In the final analysis, Republicans keep conservatives engaged by promising to reduce the national debt, yet they never do it, whereas Democrats are open about the national debt; they want to spend more and shrink the debt with higher taxes. Which side is worse, since they both spend our money for their benefit?

William L. Kovacs served as senior vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and chief counsel to a congressional committee. His books include: Congress: An Irrelevant Institution or Guardian of the Republic, Reform the Kakistocracy, the recipient of the 2021 Independent Press Award for Social/Political Change, and  Devolution of Power. He can be contacted at [email protected]