President Trump has cut the growth of the US national debt by over 90% since he took office at the end of January.
The Washington Examiner reports that growth in debt held by the public has decreased by a staggering 92% since Trump’s inauguration, as compared to the same time period in 2024.
Debt held by the public is the majority of national debt that is owed to investors outside the federal government and includes pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, banks, foreign governments and individuals, as opposed to intergovernmental debt, which is money owed by one branch of government to another.
The Examiner explains, “From Inauguration Day to May 5, debt held by the public rose by $37,238,323,646.66. Because this accounts for an influx of revenue around April Tax Day, the comparable window to compare Trump’s performance to that of his predecessor is not Trump’s first 104 days with the last 104 days of Joe Biden (when debt held by the public rose by $521,984,501,224.88), but to the same window in 2024.
“From Jan. 22, 2024, to May 6, 2024, debt held by the public rose by $478,402,286,425.95.”
One contributor is increased revenue from the “Trump business boom” and another is money from tariffs, which have increased federal tax revenue.
Perhaps the most important contributor, though, is drastically slashed spending, which has been achieved with the help of billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
In the first weeks of April, it was announced that DOGE savings had hit $150 billion.
The Department’s savings of $150 billion equate to $931.68 per taxpayer in the US.
According to the DOGE website, the savings are a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.”
The latest batch of receipts posted on the website shows over 7,000 terminated contracts, including individual contracts amounting to billions of dollars. One cancelled contract, for refugee resettlement, amounted to $2,902,177,562.
Of all the departments of the US government, Health and Human Services has so far generated the greatest cost-savings, followed by the Department of Education and the General Services Administration.
The Department of Commerce, Department of Justice and Department of Veterans Affairs are among the departments generating the least savings.