Talking Debt and Deficits in the GOP Debates
In the first four Presidential primary debates, the GOP candidates have mentioned the deficit or debt a combined 35 times, with former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley responsible for ten of those mentions. As the winner of the 2024 Presidential election will have to deal with many major fiscal challenges, it is important for them to be honest and direct with voters, make deficit reduction a priority, and put forward proposals to reduce debt and pay for new initiatives.
Mentioning the deficit and debt is of course not the same as committing to address our unsustainable fiscal outlook, but it’s a start.
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As one way to gauge which candidates have been talking about our fiscal challenges the most, we counted the number of times the words “debt” and “deficit” have been mentioned during the first four GOP primary debates and broke down the results by candidate. Ambassador Haley had the most mentions with ten. Following close behind, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy had nine mentions, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had eight. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis mentioned “debt” or “deficit” three times. Former President Donald Trump did not participate in the first four GOP primary debates, and therefore had zero mentions.1
While it’s important for candidates to talk about the problems posed by our national debt and budget deficits, it’s even more important that they have a plan for what to do about them.
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1 Only active candidates who have earned more than 2% in national polls within the last three months were included in this analysis.
