February 15, 2025
Trump is just following Bill Clinton’s bureaucracy-cutting example
By
Jack Hellner
For all the Democrats engaged in a weeping and gnashing of teeth exercise, let’s remember that President Trump is just following Bill Clinton’s bureaucracy-cutting example.
Here are some stats from Google AI: In 1990, the U.S. population was 250 million. Today it is estimated to be 335 million. That is up 34%.
In 1990, the federal budget was $1 trillion. Today it is around $7 trillion. That is up 600%. Inflation between 1990 and 2024 totaled 140%, meaning inflation averaged 2.61% over the 34-year period. So the budget went up
four times the increase in inflation. I would say it’s pretty clear that out of control spending is the problem.
Total federal revenue in 1990 was $1.03 trillion; in 2024, total federal revenue was $4.92 trillion. That is up 378%, or up 2.7 times the rate of inflation. Revenue is clearly not the problem. It should be noted that capital gains rates were cut in the 1990s, and Bush and Trump both cut federal tax rates, yet revenue still increased 2.7 times the rate of inflation.
The federal debt in 1990 was $3.2 trillion; today it is $36 trillion. That is up over 1,000%.
It is easy to see that federal spending and debt are out-of-control even if you adjust for a 34% population increase.
Here are a few things
Bill Clinton did in the 1990s because of what he considered a bloated and inefficient federal bureaucracy: