Biden-Harris fiscal record is anemic. What’s next?

By VERONIQUE DE RUGY
No matter the result of next month’s election, President Joe Biden will soon leave the White House. That makes it a good time for a nearly final assessment of his and Vice President Kamala Harris’ first-term legacy on federal spending and debt — a tragedy of epic proportion. Unfortunately, neither Harris nor her rival on the campaign trail has made a priority of fixing this problem.
According to brand-new Congressional Budget Office numbers, the 2024 budget deficit is around $1.8 trillion. It’s heading to $2.8 trillion in 10 years, assuming a very rosy scenario. Worrisome too is that interest payments on government debt will eat up over 20% of revenue in 2025.
The federal government’s debt is now over $28 trillion by one measurement. That’s $2 trillion more than last year and $6 trillion more than when the Biden-Harris team entered the White House. This debt stands at 100% of America’s GDP, which, other than a one-year exception at the end of World War II, is the highest ratio we’ve ever had. Unlike in 1946, today’s debt is only going to grow.
The Biden-Harris administration isn’t the only one responsible for this debt spiral. Former President Donald Trump was also bad. As Brian Riedl wrote recently, “Trump had already signed legislation and executive orders adding $4 trillion to 10-year deficits before the bipartisan pandemic response added $4 trillion more.” That’s serious red ink.
But when Biden and Harris took office, most of the pandemic was behind us. The economy was reopening, vaccination was underway and the economy resumed growing. However, the end of this emergency didn’t mean a return to less spending and lower levels of debt. Instead of suggesting, like then-President Barack Obama did after the Great Recession, that he would halve the deficit in five years, Biden extended pandemic emergency programs.
Three months into the term and four months after the last $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill, the Biden-Harris administration pushed through another $1.9 trillion bill.
The impact of this irresponsible spending spree is plain to see in other CBO numbers. When Biden and Harris entered the White House, the budget deficit was a pandemic-influenced $2.3 trillion, and it was set to fall to $905 billion by 2024. As mentioned above, it’s now twice what it was supposed to be.
This White House has been terrible for our finances. Now that Harris is running for the top job, she shows no signs of slowing the spending down. She wants trillions in tax credits for many different special interest groups. Trump, with his expensive brand of populism, is only slightly better. No matter who wins the election, that person will inherit a gigantic deficit and major interest payments that will only go up, thanks to an entitlement-spending explosion.