Trump economists say the most unbelievable things

Trump administration economists’ latest debt-reducing mantra is a throwback from 15 years ago. It might have worked back then. Today, the suggestion is nothing more than a diversion tactic to make voters think the administration has a realistic plan for reducing the government’s debt.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently told Sara Eisen of CNBC , “There’s nothing magic about the $40 trillion number, and we can grow our way out of that.” He made a similar claim to reporters before the Group of 20 finance ministers meeting in North Carolina: “The world is awash in debt and the only way for us to get out of this is to grow our way out of this.”

Vice President JD Vance has been parroting Bessent’s position. Carl Higbie of Newsmax asked the vice president if there was “anything on the horizon offsetting” the $40 trillion federal debt. Vance replied that Bessent’s idea “is to get the economy to a point where it is growing faster than our debt.” And then he asserts, “If you look, we’re on track.”

Does the Government Accountability Office support the Bessent-Vance claim? According to its June report , debt held by the public “is projected to grow more than twice as fast as the economy over the next 10 years, reaching 123% of the size of the economy in 2036.” Apparently, the government watchdog agency didn’t get Team Trump’s talking points.

The report adds, “The federal government’s unsustainable fiscal outlook poses serious economic, national security, and societal challenges.”

Just consider what it would take for the country to grow its way out of the federal debt.

Federal debt is now more than $40 trillion and growing. If Congress were to not only balance the annual budget but have a $2 trillion budget surplus every year, and then apply that surplus to the federal debt, it would take 20 years to pay off a $40 trillion debt. President Trump only has two more years.

And that’s if we had a $2 trillion budget surplus. For the last three years, we have had a near $2 trillion annual budget deficit .

In 2025, the U.S. Treasury says total federal revenue was $5.23 trillion. Total federal spending was $7.01 trillion, leaving a budget deficit of $1.78 trillion. In order to have a budget surplus of $2 trillion, the government would have to have collected an extra $3.78 trillion — about 70 percent more than our actual revenue. And it would have to keep up that fiscal discipline for 20 years.

But wait: Bessent’s idea is to promote policies that spur economic growth, which could bring in more federal revenue.

To do that the economy needs to be growing at a very rapid rate, which it isn’t. The average annual economic growth rate since 1946 is 3.2 percent. Yet gross domestic product was 2.1 percent in the first quarter of 2026 and only 1.5 percent in the second.

Economist Petere Earle with the American Institute for Economic Research writes , “stabilizing the federal debt burden through economic growth — without spending cuts, tax increases, or additional borrowing — would require something on the order of 7.3 percent annual real GDP growth.”

Of course, the Trump administration could dramatically reduce federal spending. But while the administration may be spending less on some entitlement programs, it’s spending much more in other areas. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office predicts deficits will continue to rise such that total federal debt will hit $56.1 trillion in 10 years — and that estimate was before the cost of the war with Iran is factored in.

Bessent may be channeling an idea being discussed around 2011, when the country was having serious discussions about how to balance the federal budget. The idea was that if federal spending were held to a 1 percent increase per year, revenue from a growing economy would balance the budget in about 10 years. The legislation that Congress did pass, the “ budget sequester ,” didn’t balance the budget, but it did reduce the annual deficit by one-half to two-thirds for the next six years. Even with the biggest budget cut in decades, federal debt kept rising, just not as fast.

It is long past time for Trump’s economists to be honest with the public. Every administration puts a positive spin on how its economic policies are affecting the country. But claiming that economic growth can pay off a $40 trillion federal debt isn’t just exaggeration; it is dishonesty. If Trump’s economists say unbelievable things, you shouldn’t believe them.

Merrill Matthews is the Texas state chair of Our Republican Legacy.