In this week’s video, CNN’s Jake Tapper explains that federal deficits are rising rather than “coming down,” as President Donald Trump claimed.
On Feb.19, Trump said, “I don’t know if you noticed, but deficits seem to be coming down.” The president appeared to be referring to the Treasury Department’s announcement at the time that the U.S. ran a relatively low deficit of $13.5 billion in December. That was nearly $10 billion less than the previous December.
But, as we wrote last month, the deficit was 42 percent higher in the first three months of fiscal year 2019, October through December, compared with the same period last year. And, as Tapper says in the video, more recent data, released this week, show that the deficit in the first four months of fiscal 2019 was 77 percent higher than it was for the same period in fiscal 2018.
The fact is, deficits have increased under Trump and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that deficits will continue to go up in future years.
This latest fact-checking video is based on our article “Trump Disinformation on Deficits.” Go to FactCheck.org to see our prior collaborations with CNN’s “State of the Union.”