evidence: Joe Biden blames Donald Trump for one quarter of today’s debt, ignores context [...] As Democrats and Republicans gird for battle over the nation’s debt limit, President Joe Biden sought to tag his predecessor, Donald Trump, with a significant share of the blame for the nation’s $31.4 trillion federal debt. The U.S. debt has been collecting for over 200 years, and "one quarter of that debt was accumulated in the four years of my predecessor," Biden said during a Jan. 20 event with the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Biden also touted actions on his watch to cut the yearly deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, setting up a contrast with the debt on Trump's watch.