It's time for the president to meet Republicans at the negotiating table
Biden’s add to the national debt outdoes Trump
By
David Winston
Posted April 26, 2023 at 2:38pm
According to the CBO, Biden is going to match Trump’s addition to the national debt in just three years, reaching a total of $7.1 trillion over his four years. That would be $1.5 trillion more than Trump contributed during his term, which included the 2020 one-time COVID emergency spending. If Biden’s 2024 proposed budget actually passed, he would add as much to the national debt as Trump and Bush 43 combined. House Republican leaders have made clear his budget isn’t going anywhere; but it illustrates just how out of control Biden’s spending policies really are.
Biden could have been close to a balanced budget
If Biden had returned to the 2019 pre-COVID spending levels and rejected the trillions of dollars in excess spending that has characterized his first two years, he could have come much closer to a balanced budget for 2022. Adjusting the 2019 spending for inflation, and given the remarkable increase in revenues, the deficit in 2022 would have been only $194 billion instead of a deficit of $1.3 trillion.
However, given the direction of current spending, the CBO baseline projects the annual deficit will be over $1 trillion dollars through 2029, and then it goes over $2 trillion dollars for the years spanning 2030-2033.
Future proposed yearly spending could top $10 trillion
Worse, CBO baseline spending projections show that Biden’s proposed budgets for the next two years will continue the $6 trillion-dollar spending of 2020 and drive it even higher through the rest of his term and beyond.
Biden’s own proposed 2024 budget would be 55 percent higher than Trump’s spending in 2019, and his budget projections are even more alarming. His 2024 proposed budget has spending that will reach the $7 trillion threshold in 2025, $8 trillion in 2028, $9 trillion in 2031, and $10 trillion in 2033.
Biden’s political decision to propose these levels of spending, despite the current $31 trillion federal debt, shows how important it is for Congress to clearly establish some level of fiscal discipline. The CBO baseline is projecting that if things stay on the current path for the next 10 years (2024-2033), the debt will be increased by $20.2 billion. Translating that from dollars into seconds that would be 6.4 centuries.
OPINION — President Biden is preventing a debt ceiling deal and only making the country's staggering debt worse.
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