With stupefying regularity, Joe Biden subjects Americans to his demonstrably preposterous claim that he’s some sort of deficit disciplinarian.
You won’t hear this from the White House with November’s election just one month away and Kamala Harris’s electoral prospects weakening by the day, but the federal government just put their ability to perpetuate that falsity to rest.
Specifically, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just announced that the final Biden/Harris budget deficit rose $139 billion in the fiscal year 2024 to $1.83 trillion. Federal reports typically read drier than a scone in the desert, but the CBO’s assessment is damning:
The federal budget deficit was $1.8 trillion in fiscal year 2024, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. The estimated deficit for 2024 was $139 billion more than the shortfall recorded during fiscal year 2023. Revenues increased by an estimated $479 billion (or 11 percent). Revenues in all major categories, but notably individual income taxes, were greater than they were in fiscal year 2023. Outlays rose by an estimated $617 billion (or 10 percent). The largest increase in outlays was for education ($308 billion). Net outlays for interest on the public debt rose by $240 billion to total $950 billion.
In other words, incoming tax revenues actually increased last year, yet the deficit nevertheless increased due to wasteful spending and higher interest payments due to elevated rates resulting from over three years of runaway Biden/Harris inflation.
It gets worse.
Without a calendar oddity at the end of fiscal year 2023, this past year’s deficit would’ve been even worse:
Outlays in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 were affected because October 1 (the first day of fiscal years 2023 and 2024, respectively) fell on a weekend. As a result, certain payments were shifted into the prior fiscal year – $63 billion from 2023 into 2022, and $72 billion from 2024 into 2023. If not for those shifts, the deficit in 2024 would have been 13 percent larger – instead of 8 percent larger – than it was in 2023.
But wait – it actually gets even worse than that.
The CBO notes that the Biden/Harris deficit record would’ve been worse had the United States Supreme Court not blocked the administration’s student loan bailout effort:
Last year’s deficit of $1.7 trillion would have been larger if not for the recording of budgetary effects related to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a plan the Administration announced in 2022 to cancel many borrowers’ outstanding student loans. If those effects, and the effects of timing shifts, were excluded for fiscal year 2023, the deficit for that year would have been $2.0 trillion instead of $1.7 trillion.
Just as damningly, and to the CBO’s credit, it highlights how payment on debt interest now exceeds national defense spending due to the new era of higher interest rates under Biden/Harris:
The next-largest increase in outlays was for net interest on the public debt. Those outlays rose substantially – increasing by $240 billion (or 34 percent) – primarily because interest rates were significantly higher than they were in fiscal year 2023.
That is unacceptable and unsustainable. In a world of increased threats from China, Iran, Russia and North Korea – which themselves result from three years of Biden/Harris mismanagement in foreign affairs and national security – national defense should be higher, and interest payments along with inflation and interest rates should be lower.
Again returning to this year’s presidential election, sober voters can’t help but note the sharp contrast from the previous administration. Under President Donald Trump, federal deficits prior to Covid emergency spending came in at $665 billion in 2017, $779 billion in 2018 and $984 in 2019, approximately half the Biden/Harris current deficit.
Although the Biden/Harris administration and its media apologists will claim that their deficits came in lower than the 2020 and 2021 Covid emergency deficits, what they won’t acknowledge is that Democrats sought even more spending those years, not less. They also ignore blowout Biden/Harris wish lists that would’ve raised deficits even more but for Senator Joe Manchin’s refusal to accede.
Moreover, Americans also note that Trump administration management of international affairs brought relative peace and stability compared to what we’ve experienced since Biden and Harris entered office.
Meanwhile, Biden’s hand-selected apprentice and now successor Kamala Harris confirmed two separate times this week when given the opportunity that she wouldn’t do anything different than Biden in her administration. From inflation to border chaos to international weakness and now to their rising budget deficits, that’s a sobering thought for voting Americans.
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.