Clyburn: Biden ‘Increased a Lot of Spending’ but Didn’t Run up Debt

Wednesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, House Assistant Minority Leader Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) claimed that while President Biden “has increased a lot of spending,” we “didn’t run up the debt” because they paid for things like the American Rescue Plan Act.

Clyburn said, “[Former President Trump] made it very clear that if he were President, he would understand the sanctity of maintaining the good faith and credit of the United States of America. Now that he’s no longer President, he doesn’t care whether or not the country defaults. So, that’s the hypocrisy that’s in this. Look, when we were giving him what he needed to raise the debt limit, he was also increasing the debt, a $2-trillion tax cut that went straight to the debt, didn’t pay for it at all. And so, what we’re attempting to do now is raise this debt limit to accommodate all of those expenses that he ran up as President.”

False.

“And so, I don’t understand how my good friends on the other side of the aisle can keep a straight face, knowing full well that we are at the limit in large measure because of what happened for the four years of the Trump administration,” Clyburn continued. “If you look at what has been happening with this administration, this President has increased a lot of spending. We paid for it. We didn’t run up the debt. We paid for the Rescue Act. We paid for the infrastructure bill. These things — we believe in pay-go and we have been paying as we have gone along, and that’s what we’re trying to do now, raise the debt limit to accommodate those expenses that got run up when the — 45 was President.”

Fact check: the Biden administration is intentionally crashing the economy, not rescuing it.