Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Sunday blamed Democrats for going on a “wild spending binge” after regaining control of the White House and Congress, despite previous spending increases under former President Trump.

“It’s irresponsible, what we are doing to the next generations,” Cruz said on “Fox News Sunday.” “To give you an order of magnitude, in 2017, total government spending was about $4 trillion.”

“Fast forward to today, total government spending has gone from $4 trillion, all the way up to nearly $7 trillion. We’ve nearly doubled government spending since 2017,” he added.

“What have tax revenues done? They’ve gone from $3.3 trillion to right about $5 trillion,” Cruz continued. “So, we’re taking in a lot more taxes, but they can’t keep up with the Democrats’ wild spending binge.”

According to data from the Treasury Department, the government’s total spending for fiscal year 2017 was $4.79 trillion. Spending remained relatively steady under the Trump administration until 2020, when it jumped to $7.47 trillion. Spending in 2021 was on par with the year before, at $7.38 trillion, before decreasing to $6.27 trillion in 2022, according to the Treasury Department.

“During Donald Trump’s presidency, during COVID, Republicans and Democrats in a bipartisan way passed emergency COVID relief that was very expensive,” Cruz acknowledged on Sunday. “We’re facing a pandemic. We had politicians who had shut much of the country down, and in that emergency, we acted.”

However, he suggested that Democrats continued on a “spending binge” in the following years.

“What happened subsequently is that you had [President] Biden and [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] and [former Speaker] Nancy Pelosi [D-Calif.] do a complete takeover of the federal government and they went on a spending binge,” Cruz said.

Cruz pointed to the spending increase as the reason that Republicans have rejected Biden’s request for a “clean” increase of the debt ceiling, after supporting multiple increases under Trump.

“Well, it’s different because the magnitude of where the debt is massive,” he said.

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