Coming Soon Courtesy of Bidenomics — the $48 Trillion Public Debt

President’s claim that he reduced the deficit by $1.7 trillion is an untruth.

AP/Mark Schiefelbein
President Biden arrives for the State of the Union address on Capitol Hill, March 7, 2024. AP/Mark Schiefelbein

In Thursday’s State of the Union speech, President Biden had a whole bunch of whoppers and tall tales and fabrications that never seem to coincide with factual reality.

The Committee to Unleash Prosperity’s hotline reports on the budget deficit, a familiar Biden untruth when he says he reduced the deficit by $1.7 trillion — a number he’s carried on with for years and the Washington Post gave him a Bottomless Pinocchio for.

The reality is Mr. Biden generated about $6 trillion of red ink during his term. And the latest Congressional Budget Office baseline shows that federal debt in public hands is projected to rise to $48 trillion, or 116 percent of GDP — both unheard-of numbers.

The House Budget Committee estimates that Mr. Biden’s most recent budget includes $82 trillion in spending over 10 years, eclipsing 24.8 percent of gross domestic product.

Which is $21 trillion higher than the pre-Biden CBO projections, and is 21.1 percent more spending than the historical average of the past half-century.

Then, of course, Mr. Biden gives the usual left-wing “we will make the rich pay their fair share” pap. 

Which is always an amusing charge, given the fact that the top 1 percent of earners pay nearly half of the federal income tax — 46 percent to be precise — even though they earn only 26 percent of the income.

By the way, study after study shows that lower tax rates reduce tax sheltering and produce more tax revenues. Mr. Biden, with the usual far-left Democratic class warfare, promises to grow the economy with a ‘soak the rich’ tax plan that will raise the corporate tax, nearly double the capital gains tax, quadruple the stock buyback tax, and impose a new 25 percent wealth tax on unrealized capital gains on billionaires.

Mr. Biden, though, defines ‘billionaires’ as anyone with more than $100 million, showing once again that he can’t count. Then he keeps telling us that he inherited a terrible economy from President Trump. 

The only problem with that assertion is that in the third quarter of 2020, Mr. Trump’s Covid V-shaped recovery produced a 33 percent growth rate — and a 4.1 percent GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2020. Plus, 6.5 percent growth in the first quarter of 2021, and — get this — with an inflation rate of 1.4 percent.

This was not an economy on the brink of disaster, this was an economic silver platter than Mr. Trump handed to Mr. Biden, who then proceeded to slam it into the ground with a peak 9 percent inflation rate and two negative GDP quarters in the first half of 2022. Go figure.

One of the many troubles in the Biden economy is the affordability crisis, where typical working families have lost money in the last three years because of the high prices of essential goods and services and lackluster income.

During the Trump years, working folks got a 9 percent pay increase adjusted for inflation. During the Biden years, they lost nearly 5 percent.

The average oil price under Mr. Trump was $53 a barrel. Under Mr. Biden it’s been $80 a barrel. The average inflation rate under Mr. Biden has been 6 percent at an annual rate for 3 years. Under Mr. Trump, it was 1.9 percent for his whole four-year term.

Adjusted for the pandemic, Mr. Trump created 6.4 million new jobs. Mr. Biden — only 5.5 million. And last night, Mr. Biden continued his free-spending ways, but adding a new wrinkle.

He’s going to try to push out a $400 mortgage credit to deal with the mortgage home-ownership affordability crisis, where mortgage rates were 2.5 percent under Mr. Trump and are now more than 7 percent under Mr. Biden.

Mr. Biden, too, wants to forgive student loans. Even though the Supremes have ruled it unconstitutional. Plus, he wants to increase a refundable earned income tax credit, and a refundable child tax credit. And a permanent expansion of supersized Obamacare subsidies.

And the Biden climate war against fossil fuels continues, while he does nothing to solve the open-border war with illegal immigrants and the illegal immigrant-related crime wave.

Yes, Mr. Biden was still standing at the end of his speech — but no, he’s not doing a thing to make America great again.

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.


The New York Sun

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