Fox News anchor confronts Trump White House official over ballooning deficit, pointing out it began

Although then-candidate Donald Trump promised in 2016 to eliminate the national deficit if he was elected president, the deficit has actually ballooned significantly since he took office and is projected to grow substantially moving forward. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace confronted acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney about this fact Sunday, pointing out that the deficit had begun decreasing under former President Barack Obama before Trump took over. "After dealing with the Great Recession in his first term, the deficit under Obama dropped by an average of 11 percent a year in his second term," Wallace pointed out to Mulvaney — who also serves as Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget — on Fox News Sunday. "The deficit has increased by 15 percent a year in President Trump's first two years. Under President Trump, our national debt has increased by more than $2 trillion," Wallace continued. He pointed out that estimates project that the amount will "top $4 trillion," if a bipartisan budget supported by the president goes through. Wallace asked how Mulvaney and the Trump administration could support such significant increases to the deficit, particularly when the president had promised to do precisely the opposite. Chris asks @MickMulvaneyOMB about the plans to add to the National debt when President Trump promised to reduce it #FNS #FoxNews pic.twitter.com/xqfbNbieTu— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) July 28, 2019  "Take our budget. Adopt our budget," Mulvaney responded, referring to the president's original budget proposal submitted to Congress earlier this year. "'Dead on arrival' is the word that everyone always uses, but if you actually went to look at it and saw what Donald Trump would do if he could pass spending bills, which he can't, you would be on your path to balance and the deficit would be down," the Trump official argued. Wallace pushed back, pointing out that Trump enjoyed Republican control of both chambers of Congress during his first two years as president and still did not pass budgets that reduced the deficit. Mulvaney responded by saying Republican lawmakers were also to blame but not Trump, arguing that they "threw our budgets in the trash." Trump's 2020 budget proposal, to which Mulvaney was referring, contradicted a key 2016 campaign promise made to voters by the president. It aimed to spend $1.5 trillion less on Medicaid and $845 billion less on Medicare, despite Trump promising as a presidential candidate that he was "not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid" like "every other Republican." That White House proposal, despite Mulvaney's claims, would have also been the largest federal budget in U.S. history, calling for $4.75 trillion in spending. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press in the Oval Office of the White House July 26 in Washington, D.C. Alex Wong/Getty  Democrats strongly objected to the cuts to popular social programs, compromising by granting Republicans and Trump

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