Both parties are responsible for the inflation and debt. Fiscal policy is largely driven by congress, not the president
[0] Yes, I know that the Republicans said that they were going to cut spending to match the tax cuts, but that never ends up happening.
There's a fair argument to be made that the Democrats could/should have reversed these disastrous fiscal policies when they gained power, but it's important to be wary of Murc's Law while also acknowledging doing so would also burn a lot of political capital Democrats never seem to have much of.
The American electorate is a grade school child constantly evaluating which parent it likes the most. One tells you that you can eat as much candy as you like and play video games all night (neither of which hit you until the following day), while the other occasionally tells you to eat your vegetables, do your homework, and clean your room.
Both parties have run an increasing deficit, with the only outlier being a small amount of time in the late 90s. The deficit is largely caused by social security outlays, medicare/medicaid outlays, and military spending, none of which are going to meaningfully change under either party
Where change in deficit is the final budget deficit - starting budget deficit
So, every Republican president runs an increasing deficit and every Democrat president runs a decreasing deficit.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2496/national-debt-growth-by-yea...
Also, inflation wasn’t temporary
Between his first term and his second term to date (2+ more years to go), Trump is responsible for more that one quarter (29%) of US debt (USD 11.6T / 40T):
* https://time.com/article/2026/08/21/national-debt-trump-bide...
There was a bit of a mitigating circumstance of COVID (for Trump and Biden), which caused the debt to jump for many countries as well (and not just the US), but it's not like Trump et co are helping the math along with all the tax cuts and asking for a US$ >1T military budget.
But I would say a large reason why the US is in the fiscal position it is now in is because of Trump and a GOP Congress. (See also tax cuts under Bush 43 and Reagan; Bush 41 raised them a bit.)
The one thing both parties agree on though is running up a massive deficit
Assuming you're talking about the Senate filibuster, then this can be changed or removed by simple majority vote. It's not in the Constitution, just a rule that the Senate adopted.
Like, personally I think that even sans filibuster, the Senate would move much slower than the House, because of election cycles.
On an earlier HN economic story, someone provided data showing that this is entirely the responsibility of Republican administrations. Going back to Eisenhower, the Deficit has only increased under Republican Presidents and only decreased under Democratic ones (with one exception, Johnson was slightly positive in Deficit increase).
Presidents cannot pass fiscal policy. They can only sign or veto new fiscal policies or act on existing policies passed by congress that give them fiscal latitude
I’ve explained this many times in this thread. We’ve reached the heat death of useful discussion so this will be my final comment in this thread
Ultimately the president is enabled or constrained by laws enacted by congress
You might argue it is inflationary.
It is highly unusual to argue that taxation is inflationary since the whole point of inflation is to reduce demand.