General Discussion

Nevertheless, the meeting on Tuesday proceeded as planned, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller took the opportunity to share a claim that warranted a closer look.

Stephen Miller: "Based on what I've heard, we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-05-26T18:32:08.726Z

“Based on what I’ve heard, we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them,” Miller said.

Roughly a day later, at a White House Cabinet meeting, his boss made the same point.

Trump claims preposterously that if Vance does a good enough job rooting out fraud, "we'll have a balanced budget without having to do anything. This is the kind of money they stole. I hope Todd is gonna do a real job."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-05-27T16:08:37.519Z

If Vance’s task force roots out enough fraud, Donald Trump declared, “we’ll have a balanced budget without having to do anything.”

Notwithstanding what Miller has “heard” from unnamed sources, this entire argument is ludicrous. The budget deficit in 2025 was $1.8 trillion, and every independent estimate suggests that fraud, while a problem worth taking seriously, is nowhere near that total.

But there’s another element to this that bears repeating. The New York Times’ David French wrote online, in response to Miller’s claim, “This is wildly false, and it breeds a dangerous level of ignorance and wishful thinking in the American public. We’d have to make some hard choices (including making some very tough trade-offs) to come close to balancing the budget. Saying anything else is irresponsible.”

Nearly a month ago, the U.S. national debt exceeded 100% of the nation’s gross domestic product, crossing what The Wall Street Journal described as “a once-unthinkable threshold.” The news, dealing with an issue Republicans used to pretend to care about, went largely ignored in GOP circles.

Now, however, the Trump White House, which is responsible for adding more than $9 trillion (and counting) to the debt, expects the public to believe it can balance the budget by doing nothing more than addressing fraudulent payments that don’t appear to exist.