‘Starve the beast’? The $40tn cost of Republicans’ false promises to cut spending

The enormous US debt under Trump will hobble the next Democratic administration – just as the GOP planned You could pin the US’s staggering $40tn in government debt to Donald Trump’s Keystone Cops-style governance. Tariffs he sold as a new source of revenue were struck down by the supreme court, forcing the government to return tens of billions of dollars to importers. Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), ostensibly created to stop wasteful government spending, decimated federal programs and likely killed millions of children , but did nothing to close the budget deficit.