Fact check: Was Biden’s government spending bill the same as trump’s

1. The competing headline claims that set the debate ablaze

Analysts and officials have offered competing headline numbers about how much each president “added” to the national debt. A June 2024 study reported that Trump’s government measures added roughly $8.4 trillion to the national debt while Biden’s added about $4.3 trillion across comparable windows, asserting a clear gap in scale ^[1]. Another June 2024 analysis also concluded Trump’s plans would add roughly twice as much—about $7.5 trillion versus $3.5 trillion for Biden—when projecting cumulative deficits through 2035, reinforcing the narrative that Trump-era policy drove larger projected deficits ^[2]. Those findings frame the central claim that the spending bills were materially different in net fiscal impact ^{[1] [2]}.

2. A later official hearing offered a sharply different tally

A January 2025 hearing statement contradicted earlier academic estimates, asserting Biden added $8.4 trillion to the debt while Trump added $7.8 trillion, implying the two presidents’ net fiscal effects were much closer than earlier studies suggested ^[3]. That shift highlights that public statements and congressional testimony can present alternative totals based on selected baselines and which legislative actions are counted. The January 2025 figure directly disputes the June 2024 academic totals and signals a political or methodological reframing of which laws and fiscal years should be attributed to each president ^[3].

3. Methodology differences explain much of the disagreement

The sources make clear the numbers vary because analysts use different accounting windows, include or exclude tax changes, count enacted versus proposed measures, and apply dynamic economic feedbacks differently. For example, a July 2025 Penn Wharton model quantified one Trump reconciliation bill’s primary deficit increase at $3.2 trillion over ten years (dynamic cost $3.6 trillion), which is a narrower measure than ten-year cumulative borrowing often cited elsewhere ^[5]. Other summaries explicitly separate net spending increases from net tax cuts, noting Trump combined large tax cuts with spending changes, affecting net borrowing comparisons ^{[4] [2]}. These methodological choices drive divergent headline totals.

4. Context about what each administration’s budgets actually proposed

The Biden administration’s FY2025 budget documents emphasize investments in education, health, and infrastructure and claim a plan to reduce deficits by about $3 trillion over a decade, with a $7.3 trillion total spending request and revenue-raising proposals like higher corporate taxes and a minimum tax on wealthy taxpayers ^{[6] [7] [8]}. Those filings present the administration’s stated intent to combine spending with revenue measures, which analysts can treat as offsetting items in ten-year net cost estimates. By contrast, other analyses of Trump-era measures focus on enacted reconciliation and tax changes that increased ten-year borrowing projections, complicating direct comparisons unless revenue offsets are consistently handled ^{[6] [4]}.

5. Recent studies and partisan framing: who’s emphasizing what—and why it matters

Later studies and op-eds highlight that public finances worsened under both presidencies, but they emphasize different drivers: some academic pieces and watchdogs emphasize Trump-era tax cuts and projected deficits as the larger driver of additional borrowing, while later statements—particularly in hearings—may attribute larger totals to Biden when different baselines or longer attribution windows are used ^{[9] [4] [3]}. The presence of official White House budget claims that the FY2025 request lowers deficits by roughly $3 trillion contrasts with watchdog and academic tallies that sum enacted laws, indicating possible agenda-driven framing: administrations tend to present future budgets as corrective, while watchdogs tally enacted and proposed rules differently ^{[8] [4]}.

6. Bottom line for readers who want a clear answer

The claim “Biden’s government spending bill was the same as Trump’s” is false under the analyses provided: multiple independent studies and budget trackers conclude Trump-era measures added more projected borrowing in several commonly cited ten-year windows than Biden-era measures, though at least one later official statement produced different totals that narrow the gap or reverse it depending on attribution rules ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}. Determining a single definitive number requires specifying the exact bills, the time frame, whether tax changes are included, and whether static or dynamic scoring is applied; without those conventions, comparisons will continue to produce conflicting headlines ^{[5] [7]}.