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Posted on 08/21/2026 8:09:52 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
Vice President Vance said Thursday night that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has a “very discreet plan” to shrink the nation’s debt.
“He [Bessent] has had a very discreet plan, of course, supported by the president of the United States, to get the United States to a point where our economy is growing faster than our debt,” Vance said on Newsmax’s “Carl Higbie Frontline.”
“And if you look, we are on track. So, even though the debt is too high, even though we inherited this debt bomb from the Biden administration, we actually do have a plan to get the economy growing faster than the debt and that’s the most important thing,” the vice president added.
On Thursday, Bessent claimed the U.S. can “grow” its way out of the national debt, which hit $40 trillion on Wednesday.
“There’s nothing magic about the $40 trillion number, and we can grow our way out of that,” Bessent told “Squawk on the Street” co-host Sara Eisen on CNBC.
“But what we do want to signal is I think there’s been a lot of misinformation in terms of what’s going on with the deficit, what’s going on with the deficit to GDP,” he added.
Bessent said that a temporary aspect of the debt comes from tariff refunds ordered by the Supreme Court in a February ruling against emergency tariffs from President Trump.
The Treasury Department head said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is going to implement “the same level of tariffs,” and that he expects the “2026 tariff income is going to be roughly what it was in ’25.”
Lawmakers have recently raised concerns over the national debt, decrying Congress’s inability to sufficiently deal with an issue that has become harder to ignore.
The GOP has commonly cited federal spending and entitlement programs as main causes behind the debt, with Democrats emphasizing the need for increased taxation of wealthy Americans and corporations as well as spending reforms.
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Without meaningful plans to abolish the 3rd central bank, all this talk is pure nonsense.
Print enough money and pay off the debt. Simple and discreet. Of course the dollar might end up worthless.... better start buying gold....
I am not optimistic. A growing American economy will bring in more tax dollars. Which will motivate Congress to spend more.
What we need (among other things) is a president who will veto any budget that is not balanced. And yes, I know such a veto would bring with it a ton of problems.
Are we going to use Bessent’s Chase Sapphire Preferred Card? Or just the regular bunch of government credit cards?
What is the solution? Milton Friedman made an excellent argument for a Balanced Budget Amendment. The only way that is going to happen is thru a Convention Of States.
This is the second stupid, naive statement by the VP.
The first was that lowering gas prices was the principal objective of the Iran war.
The US national debt is about to reach $40 trillion milestone — and it’s likely to hit $50 trillion soon (July 2029)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/ar-AA2a79gF
The problem President Trump has is the GOP and the courts. The Democrats and their Socialist friends are a given. If the GOP doesn’t support MAGA (Thune and friends, are you listening?) the Democrats count on the anti-Constitution judges who are blocking all attempts at real reform. It all goes back to the biggest roadblock, McConnell’s hand-picked guy, Thune.
I think by ‘shrink’ he is referring to interest payments not being half the yearly budget.
No, his American Airlines Citicard so government workers can fly using miles.
As Pete Townshend might have written...
The deep state deceived me, now here's a surprise
I can go wherever 'cause there's AA miles I fly
I can fly for miles and miles, I can fly for miles and miles,
I can fly for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles...
Don't forget the impact of inflation. In other words, up $3.8 T in today's dollars is less than half of $7.5 T in yesterday's dollars.
Below is a graph showing increase in debt by percentage per year.
As much as I fuss about Trump and Bush running up debt in their years, it's hard to blame the total debt on Republicans more than Dims.
Source: https://www.macrotrends.net/2496/national-debt-growth-by-year
The two green bars on the right are the % of debt increase that Trump 2.0 has added so far. The red circled represents the Trump 1.0 years, with the large spike in year 2020 for over-the-top china virus spending. The blue circles represent the Biden and Obama years. If you ignore the 2020 spike, it looks to me like Trump's other 3 years in his first term have average per year debt increase than Obama's terms. The same for Trump's debt increase in first year 2nd term being less than the avg for Biden per year.
Look at how lower 2025 is from the prior two years (2023 and 2024 being Biden's last two years). But Biden's 4 years were an increase from Trump's first 4 years (sans 2020 and covid spending). And don't get me started on Obama adding way more to the debt than even big spending Bush.
here’s an interesting factoid.
The gold mined from the 200 mile motherload in the sierra nevadas from 1848 to 1970 represented only maybe 15 percent of the gold actually in those moutains. the mines were shut because the price of gold was too low to make mining the gold profitable.
that was in terms of 1970’s technology and gold price.
that has changed radically in the last couple years.
The gold mines in the sierra nevadas are starting to open again.
Even with the Covid disaster that was unleashed and inflicted on America because orange man bad (and dangerous to the leftist agenda).... Trump still hasn’t caused it to increase more than Obama or OBiden.
(which presidents have had the highest national debt)
Presidents with the Highest U.S. National Debt Increases
Based on U.S. Treasury data for fiscal years ending in 2026, the presidents who have added the most to the national debt — measured as the difference between the debt at the start and end of their terms — are:
Largest single-term debt increases (nominal dollars)
www.us-debt-clock.com
Joe Biden (2021–2025) – +8.45 trillion (30.5% increase)
Donald Trump (2017–2021) – +7.80 trillion (39.1% increase)
Barack Obama (2009–2017) – +9.32 trillion (87.7% increase)
George W. Bush (2001–2009) – +4.90 trillion (85.5% increase)
Donald Trump (2nd term, 2025–present) – +3.10 trillion (8.6% increase)
The Tea party was formed in 94 when the debt was $4 trillion dollars!!!
Now we are paying more in interest than we spend on defense. My my my………
This is exactly right. Congress has deemed a trillion dollar annual deficit as the new normal. If the deficit were to dop to $500B, they would go on a $500B spending spree.
the discreet plan is to grow the USA economy at 10 percent or more annually, cut fraud in the usa government, use AI to continue reducing federal government workers and generally slow the growth of federal spending.
This is exactly the playbook of the 1990’s that resulted in five years of balanced budgets.
As long as the Unicorns and Rainbows keep the economy in ever increasing GDP and never decreasing, we’ll be fine!
LOL!
The warning then was that level of spending was unsustainable. Yet 30 years and $36T later, it's still going.
That's not to say that we shouldn't be concerned, but that no one really knows how or when this will end. But, we know that it will end badly.
If the plan is not, except for maybe social security, abolishing the 80%+, $3+ trillion unconstitutional portion of the federal gov’t, the plan is not good enough.
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