Nikki Haley blames both Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis for ‘increasing debt’

While Ron DeSantis drags Donald Trump for increasing federal spending during his time in The White House, a 2024 opponent says both are to blame.

Nikki Haley’s campaign notes “that just five years ago Congressman Ron DeSantis voted for a debt increase deal (the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018) and President Donald Trump signed it into law.”

“The best way to fix Washington’s spending addiction is to elect people who have not been part of the problem. Adding at least $4 trillion to America’s $31 trillion national debt over two years without substantially cutting spending is no way to run our country’s fiscal affairs. Business as usual won’t get the job done,” Haley asserted in a statement provided by her campaign.

The shot at Trump and DeSantis is timely, issued just hours before the Florida Governor holds his first rally as a candidate in West Des Moines, and in the wake of DeSantis taking issue with big spending under the former White House administration.

During one of his post-launch interviews last week, DeSantis put himself on the “conservative side of the debate” as he noted Trump expanded the federal debt.

“I think he should not have signed those omnibus spending bills,” DeSantis said. “He added almost $8 trillion to the debt in a four-year period of time.”

The Governor also opposes the debt ceiling hike brokered by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

During an interview on Monday’s “Fox and Friends,” Gov. Ron DeSantis argued the debt ceiling deal wouldn’t stop the country from “careening toward bankruptcy.”

“Well, prior to this deal, our country was careening towards bankruptcy. And after this deal, our country will still be careening towards bankruptcy,” DeSantis said. “And to say you can do $4 trillion of increases in the next year and a half, I mean, that’s a massive amount of spending.”

DeSantis also pegged federal profligacy to the last year of the Trump administration.

“I think that we’ve gotten ourselves on a trajectory here really since March of 2020 with some of the COVID spending, it totally reset the budget and they’re sticking with that. And I think that that’s just going to be totally inadequate to get us in a better spot,” DeSantis said.

The Governor then contrasted his fiscal stewardship of the Sunshine State with federal spending.

“Look in Florida, we run big budget surpluses. We have a $1.2 trillion economy, but our debt is only $17 billion, second lowest per capita in the country,” DeSantis said.

“But we make tough choices, make sure that we look forward to the long haul. Obviously in Washington DC, they do these cycles to just get them through the next election. And that’s ultimately one of the reasons why they continue to fail.”