Gene Sperling said Donald Trump's economic ideas are irresponsible and risky. | Getty Clinton campaign: Trump economic policy would 'risk a global financial meltdown'

A top economic adviser to Hillary Clinton blasted Donald Trump's recent comments on the U.S. national debt, castigating the GOP front-runner’s economic ideas as showing "a stunning lack of responsibility and understanding of the global economy."

Trump said in an interview with CNBC earlier this week that he could reduce the national debt by having the government pay back less than it has borrowed.


“I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal,” he told CNBC. “And if the economy was good, it was good. So, therefore, you can’t lose.”

Gene Sperling — a former top national economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who has been advising Hillary Clinton on economic policy — said Trump’s comments “would risk a global financial meltdown, drive up interest rates for Americans for decades, and seriously harm middle-class families,” according to a statement released Saturday by the former secretary of state's campaign.

“For Donald Trump to casually announce he would consider defaulting on our debt for the first time in our history shows a stunning lack of responsibility and understanding of the global economy,” he said.

Other economic commentators were equally blunt in their denunciation of Trump's remarks.

Tony Fratto, a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department under former President George W. Bush and a vocal member of the "Never Trump" movement, called the comments "dumb as a bucket of rocks." Fortune Editor Alan S. Murray called them "scary."

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article said Sperling was a member of the current Obama administration.