The budget plan President Joe Biden unveiled on Monday would hike taxes, increase federal spending to unprecedented levels, and lock in budget deficits that average nearly $2 trillion annually for the next decade.<\/p>\n

But possibly the craziest detail is the fact that the White House is trying to frame all of that as being an exercise in fiscal restraint.<\/p>\n

No, really. In a “fact sheet<\/a>” released alongside the budget, the White House touted how the proposal would cut the deficit by $3 trillion over the next 10 years. “Strong and shared growth that benefits all Americans isn’t just good for working families and the economy; it will also lead to better fiscal outcomes,” the administration claims, adding that Biden believes “long-term investments in our nation and its people should be paid for.”<\/p>\n

Someone in the White House might want to Google what the phrase “paid for” actually means, because Biden’s budget assumes the federal government will keep borrowing at near-record levels for the next decade.<\/p>\n

For fiscal year 2025, which begins on October 1 of this year, Biden is asking Congress to spend $7.3 trillion while the federal government will collect just $5.5 trillion<\/a> in taxes. That will necessitate borrowing $1.8 trillion<\/a> to make ends meet. Over the 10-year window covered by the president’s budget plan, federal revenues would exceed $70 trillion, but Biden is proposing to spend $86.6 trillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is what “paid for” looks like, apparently.<\/p>\n

So what about that $3 trillion reduction in deficits that the White House is promising? That number is the result of comparing Biden’s 10-year budget plan against the current baseline projections for deficits. It doesn’t mean the debt will fall, or even stop rising\u2014we’d have to run a surplus for that to happen. It only means that, if enacted, Biden’s plan would result in the national debt being $3 trillion lower in a decade than what’s currently projected.<\/p>\n

But simply piling up debt at a slightly slower rate shouldn’t pass for fiscal responsibility\u2014not when the government is already $34.5 trillion in debt, and when Biden is proposing to borrow more than $16 trillion over the next 10 years. (And keep in mind that those figures don’t account for any unexpected crisis\u2014a recession, a war, etc.\u2014that might push the government to borrow even more heavily.)<\/p>\n

“The level of borrowing under the President’s budget would be unprecedented outside a war or national emergency,” notes<\/a> the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit that advocates for lower deficits.<\/p>\n

Running annual budget deficits well in excess of $1 trillion makes even less sense when you consider the current economic environment. The unemployment rate in the United States has been under 4 percent<\/a> for more than two years. America’s economy grew faster<\/a> than any of the world’s other major economies over the past year. We are relatively at peace. Tax revenue is hitting levels not seen since the 1960s<\/a>, and Biden is proposing to raise taxes<\/a> on corporations and wealthier Americans.<\/p>\n

Put simply: If you can’t even get close to balancing the budget under those conditions, when can you do it?<\/p>\n

The White House should have the intellectual honesty to tell the American people that it expects them to continue financing an unstable pile of debt<\/a> that will burden their children<\/a> and sap long-term economic growth<\/a>. To claim that this budget is fiscally responsibility merely adds insult to injury.<\/p>\n

The post The White House Claims Borrowing $16 Trillion Over the Next Decade Is Fiscally Responsible<\/a> appeared first on Reason.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you can’t even get close to balancing the budget when unemployment is low, tax revenues are near record highs, and the economy is booming, when can you do it? …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":""},"categories":[19,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99604"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}