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(NewsNation) — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump squared off in the first presidential debate of the election season, blaming each other for increased national debt and claiming the job market was better under their care.
The nation’s economy will likely shift opinion in the ballot box this November, with 40% of voters believing the economy is the most important issue in the upcoming presidential election as of January 2024.
Here’s what the candidates had to say.
Inflation, tax cuts
Biden blamed current economic pitfalls on the Trump administration before him, claiming Trump left behind an “economy that was in free fall.”
“If you take a look at what was done in his administration, he didn’t do much at all,” Biden said. “When he left, things were in chaos.”
Trump echoed that same sentiment back: “He has not done a good job. He’s done a poor job, and inflation is killing our country.”
Inflation peaked to a four-decade high of 9% in summer 2022 under Biden, but has steadily decreased since the Inflation Reduction Act passed.
“When we cut the taxes, as an example, the corporate tax was cut down to 21% from 39%, plus beyond that, we took in more revenue with much less tax,” Trump said. “And companies were bringing back trillions of dollars back into our country. The country was going like never before.”
Federal debt held by the public rose from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion during Trump’s administration. That upward shift was likely influenced by Trump’s tax cuts, including the corporate tax rate change, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck project.
COVID-19 handling
Trump claimed he handled the COVID-19 pandemic with grace, spending enough to keep America from another Great Depression.
“We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have never done so well. Everybody was amazed by it,” Trump said.
That “greatest economy,” Biden rebutted, was the product of rewarding his wealthy friends with tax cuts: “He had the largest tax cut in American history, $2 trillion.”
National debt
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Trump added $8.4 trillion to the debt — including $3.6 trillion in COVID relief, $2.5 trillion from tax cut laws and $2.3 trillion from spending increases, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Biden said he would “fix the tax system” by raising taxes on billionaires. He said that, in a decade, the increased taxes for the wealthy would “be able to wipe out his debt, help … child care, elder care, making sure that we fix the health care system.”
Though Biden has repeatedly claimed the national debt reduced under his administration, it increased from $27 trillion in January 2021 to nearly $35 trillion as of June 2024.
Biden has added an estimated $4.8 trillion to the debt so far, though the CRFB’s preliminary reports do not include the Fiscal Responsibility Act or Biden’s student debt relief plans.
Jobs
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, Biden has seen the addition of 15.5 million jobs, compared to 5.2 million under Trump pre-COVID.
The Biden administration also recorded triple the job growth of Trump’s pre-COVID years.
Those jobs, Trump claimed, were “bounce back jobs” lost during COVID-19.
Trump countered: “The jobs went down and then they bounced back. He’s taking credit for bounce back jobs. You can’t do that.”
Biden also saw significant growth in manufacturing jobs, adding 777,000 against Trump’s 355,000 before the pandemic.