Gov. Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign is out with an ad on Wednesday slamming former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for their part in raising the nation's debt while in office.
The move comes as the United States's debt clocks in at more than $32 trillion, the federal deficit is estimated to hit nearly $2 trillion at the end of fiscal 2023, and inflation rose to 3.7% in August, all of which has prompted Republican consternation about the nation's finances.
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"This government is spending way too much money. They've locked in the COVID-era levels of spending, which are totally unsustainable," DeSantis says in the ad. "They borrowed, they printed, and they spent trillions and trillions of dollars since March of 2020 under the auspices of COVID and all these other things."
Toward the end of the Trump administration, in fiscal 2020, the nation's debt increased to $26.9 trillion, a $7.4 trillion rise from fiscal 2016 before Trump took office. Part of the nation's debt, while Trump was in office, is attributed to the coronavirus pandemic that led to Congress passing legislation that disbursed trillions of dollars to mitigate the economic losses.
The DeSantis ad alludes to Trump's participating in the national debt with clips of the former president signing the pandemic legislation into law and clips of Biden shaking hands with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
"Republicans are very tough when they're out of power, but when they get in power, they basically go on a spending binge too. And I think you've seen it over the last five or six years," DeSantis says in the ad. "I can tell you, in Florida, we run budget surpluses. We have the second-lowest per capita debt ratio in the entire country."
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"We've paid down debt," he continues. "I vetoed billions and billions of dollars of excessive spending. As a president, you've got to be willing to lean in and use the veto pen to be able to battle against this excessive spending."
Republican presidential candidates, including DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Vice President Mike Pence, have slammed Trump for his role in increasing the nation's debt, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics's August inflation report represents tough news for Biden, who has repeatedly touted his "Bidenomics" efforts to the public as he campaigns for reelection.