PW, can you share you source on cash on hand being classified as part of the national debt? I don’t think that’s right but I’m not sure about it.
It is very difficult to find any information favorable to Donald Trump. I am still seeking my first source again, which was a governmental information source.
The following is from The Heritage Foundation AND Politico. Conservative and liberal saying the same thing.
Over Trump’s entire term, including the 2020 spate of emergency COVID spending, the debt increased by $7.7 trillion—a staggering total, to be sure.
However, about 15% of that debt total was the result of Treasury’s choice to keep additional cash on hand during the pandemic.
Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, unsure how much tax revenue would be collected, borrowed well over $1 trillion—but kept it in reserve, without ever spending it.
Biden, however, spent that reserve, then borrowed another $7 trillion on top of it.
Instead of simply allowing that one-time emergency COVID spending to expire, Biden and the Democratic Congress continued spending at that same COVID-era level, thus institutionalizing multitrillion-dollar deficits.
Accounting for the changes in cash balances at the Treasury, the debt actually rose $6.5 trillion during Trump’s entire term— which included the $3 trillion he inherited as he came in and is up $7.9 trillion in less than four years of Biden’s tenure.
Per Politico, who is quoting Steve Mnuchin
Early on in the Covid crisis, I made sure we always had ample funds on hand to be prepared for any needed economic response,” Mnuchin said in an email.
Treasury always has to have enough cash on hand to fund immediate government spending obligations, which it keeps as deposits at the Federal Reserve. But those funds more than quadrupled in 2020. When Biden took office, Treasury’s deposits at the Fed stood at about $1.6 trillion, compared to $400 billion in 2019, and Treasury is expected to burn through about $1 trillion of that already-borrowed cash to help fund the relief package.
“That is $1 trillion of money that the Treasury does not have to borrow this year,” said Seth Carpenter, chief U.S. economist at UBS who served as a top debt-management official at Treasury under President Barack Obama.
Hope that helps. But yes, any reserves are borrowed and contribute to the deficit.
My attempt was to speak honestly about this. I should have attributed my source.
