President Trump has slowed national debt growth by 92%

Great News for President Trump—Inflation Hits Lowest Level In 4 Years Despite Tariff Chaos. The total national debt has actually shrunk since Inauguration Day.

By Tiana Lowe Doescher

May 17, 2025

For all the negative headlines hating on President Donald Trump‘s Department of Government Efficiency, daily data from the Treasury Department has vindicated the president’s crusade against our obese federal budget.

Even without the trillions of dollars expected to come with President Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill,” the White House has slowed the growth of federal debt held by the public so dramatically that the total national debt has actually shrunk since Inauguration Day.

Admittedly, the $5.5 billion decline in a $26.2 trillion national debt is a drop in the bucket, but focusing specifically on the trajectory of the debt held by the public — that is, the majority of the national debt that is financed through the likes of Treasurys, rather than intragovernmental holdings, which is merely money one agency may owe another — we can see that the second Trump administration has indeed taken a machete to federal spending.

From Inauguration Day to May 5, debt held by the public rose by $37,238,323,646.66.

Because this accounts for an influx of revenue around April Tax Day, the comparable window to compare President Trump’s performance to that of his predecessor is not President Trump’s first 104 days with the last 104 days of Crooked Joe Biden (when debt held by the public rose by $521,984,501,224.88), but to the same window in 2024.

From Jan. 22, 2024, to May 6, 2024, debt held by the public rose by $478,402,286,425.95.

Still, that means that the growth in our outstanding national debt fell by an astounding 92%.

Part of this is indeed due to the federal revenue generated by the early Trump business boom and the subsequent tariff regime, which may have scared markets but has slightly increased Uncle Sam’s coffers:

Relative to the same 104 days in 2024, the federal government collected $21 billion more in corporate tax revenue, or a 15% increase, and nearly $6 billion in tariff revenue.

But a significant portion is due to early successes at slashing spending.

While spending at the Department of Homeland Security, specifically for customs collections of tariff revenue and Border Patrol, is up $42 billion from the same period in the year prior, Education Department spending was down 13%, international aid was down 42%, and some entire line items in the federal budget, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, were completely defunded.

Furthermore, despite left-wing panic over President Trump’s attempts to downsize the IRS, with claims that tax receipts could fall as much as 10% by the end of the tax filing season, payroll taxes and entitlement taxes from self-employed workers were up more than $100 billion in this 104-day window compared to the same period in 2024.

In other words, overall tax collections are up despite nearly 1 in 3 IRS agents getting gutted by DOGE and no actual increase in tax rates themselves.

There are a couple of crucial caveats here:

Obviously, slowing the growth of our outstanding public debt by 92% is like decelerating your car while you still drive in the direction of a cliff.

And while DOGE succeeded at slashing a large share of the discretionary spending the president may legally impound, any systemic spending cuts must be authorized by Congress, meaning that most discretionary spending will still continue to rise until Congress passes lasting reforms with the “one big, beautiful bill.”

And none of this is to mention the mandatory spending entitlements that neither President Trump nor congressional Republicans nor congressional Democrats want to touch.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS MAKE PROGRESS ON PERMITTING REFORM

But President Trump should indeed tout this data to the effect of two crucial points:

First, President Trump is taking his war on waste seriously, within the narrow legal parameters he is actually allowed to operate.

This marks a paradigm shift from the disastrous tenure of the criminal Biden regime, who continued to triple down on his spending sprees on his way out of office.

But second, all of President Trump’s efforts are for naught unless Congress does its part and helps codify not just what President Trump and DOGE have already done but also the trillions in waste to come to the ax of “one big, beautiful bill.”

READ MORE:

DEVELOPING REVELATIONS: The Bountiful NESARA (National Economic Security & Reformation Act)

BREAKING: Congress Reaches Government Funding AND Debt Limit Deal, President Trump Praises!

PRESIDENT TRUMP SHUTS DOWN THE IRS – 45,000 AGENTS FIRED!

BREAKING! PRESIDENT TRUMP’S $258 BILLION SURPLUS CHANGES EVERYTHING – GESARA IS NOW ACTIVE

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