Scott Besant

Well, Steve, for the calendar year, the deficit actually went down by about $200 billion, and a big reason for that was President Trump's tariffs.

So we had a fiscal contraction, and then we grew the GDP.

Call it 3% with about 2.5% inflation.

So the really important number to look at here is the deficit to GDP.

So 2024 deficit to GDP calendar year, not fiscal year, was 6.9%.

This past year, 2025, 5.4%.

So we have made a substantial dent in the deficit to GDP.

That's the important number.

That shows that we are growing our way out of this.

So we brought the numerator down and we grew the denominator.

And if we keep this up, we're well on the way to my 3% deficit to GDP by the time the president leaves office.

Of course, in the war room.

Steve, the other thing that's important here, too, is what is...

The reason we're not making more progress on the deficit is because we are doing the immediate expensing of equipment, of factory structures, and of farm structures.

And that is productive spending.

And so we take a tax hit on that upfront that business people pay.

Any of your viewers who have small businesses, they buy an office computer, they can write 100% of it off.

They build a new farm shed, they can write 100% of that off.

But you're increasing the tax.

revenues the year after the following year.