Call him President Buyin’. As the White House credits President Joe Biden for maintaining his commitment to “fiscal responsibility,” the federal deficit will rise from $1 trillion in 2022 to $2 trillion in 2023.
His White House is anytime money and has the fiscal record to prove it. If there is one constant in this most inconstant of administrations, it is their predilection for spending. There is no problem so small that massive amounts of money cannot be thrown at it, and no problem so large that even more cannot fix it.
On March 9, the Biden administration issued the ultimate in chutzpah. Claiming Biden was delivering on his commitment to fiscal responsibility, the White House stated: “Because of the strength of the recovery and responsible winding down of emergency programs, the deficit fell by $1.7 trillion in the first two years of the Biden-Harris Administration.”
Of course, it conveniently failed to mention that Biden accomplished this fiscal feat by cutting off the inflated budget baseline of the Covid-19 era.
Just six months later, the Congressional Budget Office had stuck a pin into Biden’s budget balloon. On Sept. 11, CBO wrote in its August Monthly Budget Review: “the deficit is on track to double from $1.0 trillion in 2022 to $2.0 trillion in 2023.” So much for “delivering on his commitment to fiscal responsibility.”
Looking back, the administration’s braggadocio of six months ago seems the height of cynicism. The president’s estimators and spokespeople had to have known this was coming — that the evidence of fiscal failure
