Eric Hovde, a businessman who is the first Republican candidate to announce a challenge to Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Ba
“Since the end of the 2020 fiscal year, President Biden and Senator Baldwin have added over $7.3 trillion of debt, more than the first 228 years of our nation’s history combined.”Although Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde’s numbers look accurate, it’s not meaningful to compare them with earlier in history, when the economy was much smaller and prices were lower.
"Since the end of the 2020 fiscal year, President Biden and Senator Baldwin have added over $7.3 trillion of debt, more than the first 228 years of our nation’s history combined," his website Overall, Hovde is"pretty close on the actual numbers," said Menzie Chinn, a public affairs and economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.Part of that is because prices have increased over time. Something that cost $1 in 1776 costs more than 30 times as much in 2023, Chinn said.
So, although Hovde’s numbers look correct, economists say it’s not fair to compare them with earlier in history, when the U.S. economy was smaller and prices were lower.Economists say a better measurement is the debt-to-GDP ratio. Gross domestic product refers to how much a country produces and gives a picture of how the economy is doing.
In his video, Hovde is clear in who he blames for the increase in the debt:"Joe Biden and his Democratic allies take the cake for the damage that they have done." It includes a side-by-side photo of Biden and Baldwin. So, Hovde is correct that pandemic-era spending packages supported by Baldwin and Biden led to a spike.
Finally, the economists do agree that the national debt is a problem. If the government has to make very high interest payments, that would come at the expense of other spending, Kishor said. Instead, it’s better to look at the debt-to-GDP ratio, which did spike under Biden when the government spent more money to respond to the pandemic.
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