Comparison of US budget deficits under Obama Trump and Biden

1. What the sources actually claim — direct numbers that jump off the page

The pieces present specific percentage and dollar increases that are striking but inconsistent. One analysis reports debt rose 24.75% under Biden, 40.43% under Trump, and 69.98% under Obama, and flags Abraham Lincoln’s 2859% increase as an outlier ^[1]. Another frames the Biden-era increase as $4.3 trillion of ten-year borrowing attributable to enacted legislation and $1.2 trillion from executive actions, while assigning $8.4 trillion to Trump’s ten-year approvals, and notes excluding COVID relief reduces Trump’s share to $4.8 trillion ^[2]. A third set of figures puts Obama’s contribution at $8.6 trillion (74%), Trump’s at $6.7 trillion (33.1%), and Biden’s FY2022–23 deficits at $1.84 trillion and $1.7 trillion respectively, with national debt near $35 trillion as of July 2024 ^[3]. These claims are presented as factual within their sources but reflect different baseline choices and accounting conventions ^[4].

2. The committee and watchdog view — headline causal attributions and their caveats

Fiscal watchdogs and committee analyses in the set attribute much of the recent debt growth to policy choices: Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and spending increases and the pandemic-era rescue packages, and Biden’s combination of enacted measures and executive actions. One watchdog-style analysis summarized Trump as having approved $8.4 trillion in new ten-year borrowing and Biden $4.3 trillion, but explicitly shows how excluding COVID relief changes the picture ^[2]. Another submission from a budget-focused group frames Biden’s contribution using a broader lens—counting enacted legislation, higher interest costs, and executive actions—to propose a far larger cumulative impact than CRFB’s narrower metric ^[5]. The difference highlights that the same fiscal history can be presented as smaller or much larger depending on whether analysts count projected interest, pandemic-era emergency measures, or long-term revenue/expense projections ^{[2] [5]}.

3. Historical context matters — why simple comparisons mislead

The reports repeatedly warn that presidential-era comparisons are distorted by starting debt levels, inherited recessions or crises, and the lag between policy actions and their budgetary effects. Obama’s large percentage increase is tied to the 2008 financial crisis and the emergency fiscal response that followed, while Trump’s spike is tied to the 2017 tax cuts, defense and discretionary spending increases, and large COVID-era borrowing. Biden’s numbers are affected by the same pandemic aftershocks plus policy and interest-rate-driven spending on entitlements and services. Analyses also note the technicality that presidents generally operate under predecessor budgets for the first several months, complicating attribution solely to the sitting president ^{[6] [1] [4]}. This context explains why percent-change, dollar-change, and ten-year scoring can tell different stories from the same raw fiscal path ^[6].

4. Why figures diverge so much — methodology, windows, and what’s counted

The most consequential methodological divergences across these sources are whether analysts report total debt outstanding vs. debt added on a president’s watch, whether they include projected ten-year costs, higher interest expense, or emergency pandemic spending, and how they treat executive actions. One analysis credits Biden with $11.6 trillion of fiscal impact when counting enacted laws, interest, and executive actions, a figure that contrasts with the CRFB-style $4.3 trillion that excludes some categories ^{[5] [2]}. Another uses percent-change over the full term, producing large percentages for Obama because the base was low after crisis-era interventions ^{[1] [3]}. The practical takeaway is that apples-to-apples comparisons require identical windows, identical inclusion rules, and identical treatment of interest and emergency measures — conditions rarely met across political analyses ^{[1] [5]}.

5. What remains unsettled and why readers should care

The analyses collectively show that both parties and multiple administrations drove substantial debt growth, but they disagree on magnitude and culpability because of framing choices. Politically salient claims such as “the most debt added by any president” or precise ten-year borrowing tallies can be technically accurate under one method and misleading under another; for example, Trump reportedly added more debt in a single term than any prior single term by some measures while Biden’s projected or accumulated four-year total may surpass that under other lenses ^{[4] [2]}. This matters for public debate because policy prescriptions—spending cuts, tax changes, or entitlement reforms—depend on whether the public accepts narrow or broad fiscal accounting. The only firm factual anchor across the set is that debt rose under all three presidents and methodological choices drive the rest ^{[1] [3]}.