Among his litany of other bizarre fictions, Joe Biden continues to insist that he’s some sort of deficit disciplinarian.
Biden’s deficit falsehoods, however, have become so untenable that even notoriously left-leaning pundits have started calling him out on it.
The issue was brought into new and bolder relief last week when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) officially projected a 2024 deficit significantly higher than its already-depressing February projection.
In just four months since that February projection, fiscal conditions have deteriorated so much under Biden’s watch that this year’s deficit will be a whopping $400 billion higher and total approximately $2 trillion:
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if no new legislation affecting spending and revenues is enacted, the budget deficit for fiscal year 2024 will total $1.9 trillion. That amount is $408 billion (or 27 percent) more than the $1.5 trillion deficit the agency estimated in February 2024, when it last updated its baseline budget projections. Since then, CBO has increased its projection of outlays in 2024 by $363 billion (or 6 percent) and decreased its estimate of revenues by $45 billion (or 1 percent).
Just as alarmingly, the CBO’s longer-term forecast under Biden’s “new normal” anticipates deficit levels never experienced in American history.
In CBO’s projections, total deficits equal or exceed 5.5 percent of GDP in every year from 2024 to 2034. Since at least 1930, deficits have not remained that large for more than five years in a row. Over the past 50 years, the total annual deficit has averaged 3.7 percent of GDP.
Part of the problem is lower incoming revenues as a result of a slowing economy. “Economic growth,” the CBO reports, “is projected to slow from 3.1 percent in calendar year 2023 to 2.0 percent in 2024.”
That can’t be what Biden meant by “Build Back Better.”
In any event, the deeper problem is excessive spending.
A disturbing data point on that note is that rising interest rates mean that payments on existing U.S. debt now exceed defense spending. “In CBO’s projections,” it says, “net interest outlays total $892 billion in 2024 – surpassing discretionary outlays for defense this year – and rise to $1.7 trillion in 2034, nearly doubling over the period.”
The largest spending increase since February’s CBO estimate, however, comes by way of Biden’s taxpayer bailout of college students’ loan obligations:
About 80 percent of the increase in the projected deficit in 2024 is driven by four factors that all boost projected outlays. A $145 billion increase in projected outlays for student loans stems mostly from revisions that the Administration made to the estimated subsidy costs of previously issued loans and from the Administration’s proposed rule to reduce many borrowers’ balances on student loans. Projected outlays for deposit insurance have increased by about $70 billion because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is not recovering payments it made when resolving bank failures in 2023 and 2024 as quickly as CBO previously anticipated. (In CBO’s projections, that increase is almost entirely offset by deficit reductions in future years as those payments are recovered.) Newly enacted legislation increased projected discretionary outlays by $60 billion. Projected outlays for Medicaid have increased by about $50 billion, mainly because actual outlays thus far in 2024 have been higher than expected. (Emphasis added.)
The fact that Biden openly boasts that his student loan bailout violates Supreme Court rulings adds insult to that injury.
Nevertheless, Biden continues to brazenly champion himself a deficit hawk. Even deeply leftist PolitiFact, however, finally felt compelled to issue a recent corrective.
First, PolitiFact’s analysis highlights how “the pandemic was an extraordinary historical occurrence that provoked an aggressive, and temporary, government response” to which Biden deceptively compares his own fiscal performance.
From there, PolitiFact proceeds to compare Biden’s deficit record to his predecessor’s pre-pandemic norm:
Even at its reduced levels, the deficit remains higher under Biden than it was pre-pandemic. The deficit in 2022 and 2023 under Biden was higher than each of Trump’s first three years, partly because of bills such as the 2021 American Rescue Plan.
The same pattern emerges when the deficit is compared with the U.S. gross domestic product, a common measure of the overall size of the economy. The deficit peaked at 14.7% of gross domestic product in 2020 and fell to 5.4% in 2022. That was still bigger than the highest pre-pandemic percentage under Trump, which was 4.6%.
And now, worsening that trend, Biden’s 2024 deficit continues to exceed earlier estimates.
Whether Biden actually believes the whoppers he tells remains an open question, but the real-world consequences of his presidential mismanagement are increasingly beyond dispute.
Timothy H. Lee is Senior Vice President of legal and public affairs at the Center for Individual Freedom.
Reprinted with Permission from CFIF.org – By Timothy H. Lee
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
We never thought our country would become so out of line with our inherited morals and trust in justice, as we are today. Fairness, truth and mutual respect outlined in our constitution, bill of rights and basic laws have been betrayed and twisted by our elected officals and their minion SWAMP managers who aren’t blood in the sand Americans working in our government.The betrayal, outlined as a one world progression, isn’t the American dream. It is the dream of people who want to destroy the American way of life, not changes for hope as they want others to believe. These are people who sold new hope lies to the American people, as progressive steps toward a new one world. Please, don’t drink that cool-aid.This betrayal is, in fact, a plan to gain power and rule after individual freedoms are removed by corruption and hidden agendas. The new socialist elitist agenda is now evidence in the total lies being dictated to the American people through our own, no blood in the sand media, which today is mostly controlled with money and power as their god.If America falls into this progressive one world scheme, everything this country accomplished and stood to give to its people will be lost to the world. There will be no better life, no land of liberity, and no freedoms each and every American shares today. All of this will be lost to the rise of a new form of communism. A new lie, not a new beginning.The damage done to the American people starting during the Clinton administration, which changed American education from learning centers to an indoctrination business. Dumbing down education, changing success in learning and inovation, into mediocrity.Then, the first president of color promises, which failed in every way. His became the time of the American giveaway. Support anything that didn’t require success, fund everything to expand the indoctrination of the American people, and open the dole to organizations, groups, and people, working outside the government but supported by the government. This is the beginning of the SWAMP, which is now stronger, with corruptions running ramped in our broken present-day government.Look for the truth. It’s out there. Listen to the right plan from people who can and will bring back the American dream. Put a stop to the outragious funding of organizations that the American people don’t back and that are only in existence to launder funneled money through the SWAMP! Close down the SWAMP and any group in the government that isn’t directly involved with running government for the people has to be shut down.Then these SWAMP organizations and managers working in the government will have to find other funding, but not from our government at any level, city, county, state or federal, which should cause them to self distruct.Put an immediate stop to selling land, American soil, to any foreign country/government. They can lease land, but not own it. American land belongs to the American people, the indigenous as well as the blood in the sand Americans.To make these changes every true American has to vote in every election, and for the canadates who clearly want to stop government waste, bring back educational value and shut down freeloading organizations that aren’t critical for every American.No more immigrant presidents, senators, or representatives with no blood in the sand. Our elected government should be born from American parents born in America who understand the true value and the responsibility of freedom. In a world full of hate, where equal is subject to greed and corruption, our AMERICAN people should not be part of that world! Just vote!
What’s next? Will the DemocRATS and the DEEP STATE devalue the dollar, switch to a faux bitcoin and confiscate everyone’s bank and savings accounts under the pretense of saving our democracy?
Our national debt is reaching unsustainable proportions. It has now surpassed all federal expenditures except Social Security, and as interest rates rise in response to deficits and inflation, we will face very hard choices to regain economic stability. The current situation is worse than in 1980 when President Reagan forced the country to bite the bullet and achieve 20 years of prosperity.
Deficit? Try bankruptcy
I’m pretty sure if Biden were to tell the truth about anything he would be labeled an extremist.
Our 36 trillion debt is basically Congress’ fault! We badly need term limits with no retirement for the House or Senate. Go there for 1 or 2 terms to serve America, NOT YOUR OWN GREED. Then go home.America does not need career politicians nor lawyers serving in either the House or Senate.
Biden the quicker f**ker upper.
Biden didn’t do it by himself. All the RINO’S helped him and the Demo/Socialist/Communists send BILLIONS to support more WAR.
The voters of this country know what is happening the only ones who do not care are the dummies that still want Biden in office there hate for President Trump they would let the devil run this country.
democrats have always sucked are economics and he current democrats crowd is the worst ever.
Just today, 7/2/24, “President” Biden tapped our Strategic Oil Reserve, again, to lower gasoline prices… for the purpose of making himself look better to travelers over the July 4th weekend, in the lead-up to the election.
We need that oil reserve… which President Trump had fully topped off before Biden was placed in the Presidency with counterfeit ballots and polling place overseers who allowed surreptitious, after-hours ballot counts.
President Trump topped off that oil reserve for the purpose of seeing us through a national emergency… not to placate a delusional, washed-up charlatan who demonstrates his ill will for our nation every day.
Every time this disgusting, impulsive liar of a “President” attempts to improve his image, he does so with a transaction… a bribe, at the cost of those of us whose tax dollars provided the cash or assets he gives away for his own personal sake – to buy votes he never earned.
There you have it, for today. More treasure forfeited for the infantile, geriatric “President”… with the selfishness, dishonesty, and moral abandonment of a wayward adolescent.
Thank you for telling us the news that does not get reported in mainstream media. Many Americans are deluded by Biden’s smoke and mirrors.
In Nevada, a $0.333/gallon “road tax” increase has gone into effect as well as a minimum wage increase so I’ve no doubt I’ll be paying more and more. And the sad part is the roads still won’t be fixed!
Biden has done marginally better than Trump on the national debt, but given another half year, biden’s contribution to the debt will have exceeded Trump’s. Biden had a phantom cold during the debate, but Trump had real Covid to deal with that put our nation’s economy into a standstill.
For the deficit, biden has amateurs running monetary policy and a complicit dem senate that keeps spending and spending…
Tax and spend doesn’t work and will never work.
Just think… To pay off the deficit each person, each citizen in the United States would get a bill for $???,???. I do not know what that amount would be, but suspect very few of us would be able to pay our part of the deficit off in our life time. This must stop and to stop it now will be a bit painful for us all. A few years back, the amount each taxpayer would need to pay was staggering, and the information showed that all of the folks who do not pay taxes now would not have to pay anything toward the deficit. Does this make you fill good about our country’s financial situation? I suspect not!
“President” Biden is busy paying for his unearned votes with OUR money. That has been his consistent pattern, to such an obvious extent that it’s absurd to try to deny it.
Of course, the even bigger “Cheap Fake”, the biggest one in U.S. history, is the one where every “Democrat” on his staff AND in the mainstream media knew of Biden’s mental incapacity, but, nobody brought it forward. WOW. Just, WOW.
Perhaps if the US would at least consider competing with other nations rather than spending almost a trillion dollars a year maintaining an offensive Defense Department with some 800 sitting duck military bases scattered across the globe, we could, if all Federal spending was also capped or curtailed, slowly lower our debt to the point where the countries that have been stupid enough to buy our Treasuries will stop dumping them as they watch the US slide into national insolvency. Heck, we may someday actually balance our budget.
And tomorrow I will wake up and see three suns in the sky.