Understanding Biden and Red Ink by Dan Mitchell

I don’t worry much about budget deficits. Simply stated, it is far more important to focus on the overall burden of government spending.

To be sure, it is not a good idea to have too much debt-financed spending. But it’s also not a good idea to have too much tax-financed spending. Or too much spending financed by printing money.

Other people, however, do fixate on budget deficits. And I get drawn into those debates.

For instance, I wrote back in July that Biden was spouting nonsense when he claimed credit for a lower 2022 deficit. But some people may have been skeptical since I cited numbers from Brian Riedl and he works at the right-of-Center Manhattan Institute.

So let’s revisit this issue by citing some data from the middle-of-the-road Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). They crunched the numbers and estimated the impact, between 2021 and 2031, of policies that Biden has implemented since becoming president.

The net result: $4.8 trillion of additional debt.

By the way, this is in addition to all the debt that will be incurred because of policies that already existed when Biden took office.

If you want to keep score, the Congressional Budget Office projects additional debt of more than $15 trillion over the 2021-2031 period, so Biden is approximately responsible for about 30 percent of the additional red ink.

Some readers may be wondering how Biden’s 10-year numbers are so bad when the deficit actually declined in 2022.

But we need to look at the impact of policies that already existed at the end of 2021 compared to policies that Biden implemented in 2022.

As I explained back in May, the 2022 deficit was dropping simply because of all the temporary pandemic spending. To be more specific, Trump and Biden used the coronavirus as an excuse to add several trillion dollars of spending in 2020 and 2021.

That one-time orgy of spending largely ended in 2021, so that makes the 2022 numbers seem good by comparison.

Sort of like an alcoholic looking responsible for “only” doing 7 shots of vodka on Monday after doing 15 shots of vodka every day over the weekend.

If that’s not your favorite type of analogy, here’s another chart from the CRFB showing the real reason for the lower 2022 deficit.

I’ll close by reminding everyone that the real problem is not the additional $4.8 trillion of debt Biden has created.

That’s merely the symptom.

The ever-rising burden of government spending is America’s real challenge.

P.S. If you want to watch videos that address the growth-maximizing size of government, click here, here, here, here, and here.

P.P.S. Surprisingly, the case for smaller government is bolstered by research from generally left-leaning international bureaucracies such as the OECD, World Bank, ECB, and IMF.