It seems Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, missed a key fact in his recent Deseret News op-ed about the national debt: President Donald Trump has added more to the national debt than any other president in U.S. history (almost $11 trillion by conservative estimates), while Moore stood by in support.
A good representative must be honest with the public they serve, and that starts with taking accountability for their own actions.
The piece correctly identified our $40 trillion national debt as a threat to future generations and suggests cracking down on government fraud and revising the legislative budget process as solutions. While these are worthy goals, the op-ed glosses over how Moore’s voting record drove us straight into this catastrophic debt crisis.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Moore helped handcraft and has defended, will add an estimated $3 trillion to $4 trillion to the national debt due to its misguided tax policy. The war in Iran (which the representative has refused to formally oppose) adds at least another $42 billion — some say much more when you factor in economic disruption and military base reconstruction.
Trump’s tariff regime has sorely underperformed from a revenue perspective while gutting farmers, ranchers, small business owners and everyday Americans (this, again, Moore refuses to formally oppose). Though we could go on, let’s just add their tax policy, which favors corporations and the ultra-wealthy. It is clear that resolving the national debt is just an election season talking point for Moore.
Our national debt weighs down the future of our communities, and it needs to be meaningfully addressed. There are only two ways to balance a budget: decrease spending and increase revenue. The last time our nation faced a debt crisis this severe was post-World War II, when our debt-to-GDP ratio peaked over 113%. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, navigated the crisis by demanding fiscal accountability at the federal level while asking every American to pay their fair share.
Eisenhower’s tax policy focused on a key priority: building out a strong middle class. The top marginal tax rate was much higher than ours is now, and the maximum capital gains tax was 25%. Combined with programs that focused on supporting working Americans, like strong labor protections and an increase to the minimum wage, America’s GDP grew. This work created a foundation for prosperity that carried us through the back half of the 20th century.
Eisenhower was the only president post-World War II to have a budget surplus until President Bill Clinton.
Fraud and waste
I agree with Moore that we need to aggressively root out fraud, waste and abuse in government spending. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, fraud accounts for approximately 2-3% of our total budget. Medicaid fraud, which is often pointed to, is a concern for all taxpayers.
A joint Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services effort to identify and prosecute fraudsters is already showing promise. I support their work, which means supporting the civil servants tasked with this important responsibility, not hastily firing them through a misguided and poorly thought out DOGE process. When you look at their results so far, it is interesting to note who is guilty of abusing our system. Based on reporting from those agencies, there is a clear set of culprits: providers taking advantage of existing systems designed to help regular Americans.
Topping the list of dollars recovered due to fraud are hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturers, labs and nursing facilities — accounting for over 60% of the recovered dollars in civil cases. This is just one example of corporations abusing our democracy while our elected officials stand by and try to place the blame on someone else. We need to be honest about where the fraud in our systems is happening, and adjust our legislative priorities accordingly.
We also need to be honest about where the biggest budget asks are coming from. The current administration recently asked for a $1.5 trillion defense budget allocation, nearly doubling the 2026 fiscal request. This is for a department that has never passed an audit and whose programs often see significant cost overruns. Past studies have identified dozens of defense programs that went over on their allotted expenditures, costing Americans an additional $400 billion.
Let me be clear: This is not about cutting funding for our national security or our local military installations. Here in northern Utah, Hill Air Force Base represents the finest military workforce in the nation.
Our service members and civil servants do their jobs with honor and dedication. But they are being forced to do more with less because D.C. lobbyists and out-of-state defense contractors are siphoning off billions in unchecked cost overruns. We must reform our broken defense procurement process to ensure our tax dollars go directly to military readiness, pay and supporting the vital local missions of Hill Air Force Base.
We need a representative who will be honest with us and with themselves about how to best tackle our national debt crisis. We need someone who will be honest about their own role in contributing to the crisis. We need a representative who will tell you the truth about what it takes to balance our books. We owe it to our kids, and their kids, to be honest with ourselves about the work we need to do to fix this problem. I’d like to be the leader you trust to do that hard work. So, let’s fix it.