For most of his time in the White House, President Joe Biden has bragged about a pandemic-era drop in the national deficit that occurred on his watch.
But the president’s priorities are undercutting that messaging following a new score from the government’s nonpartisan budget forecaster that finds everything from his program to cancel student loans to bipartisan aid to Ukraine and Israel adding to this year’s estimated deficit.
Biden has long claimed that he’s been able to expand government programs while keeping the debt in check. “People have more health insurance than they ever did before,” he said at a May 22 campaign reception, “and we still cut the deficit.” On other occasions, he’s touted a drop in the deficit while citing a congressional expansion of the child tax credit.
Yet he will have a harder time making that case after the Congressional Budget Office revealed this week that its estimated budget shortfall for this year had been revised up from $1.5 trillion to $1.9 trillion.
That’s a far cry from the record $3.1 trillion spent in 2020, driven by a host of COVID-19-era stimulus programs. Biden has used this figure as the benchmark he compares the deficit to under his administration.
But the national debt is still growing, by $1.4 trillion in 2022, $1.7 trillion in 2023, and now an estimated $1.9 trillion in 2024. The largest annual deficit of the Trump administration before 2020 was $980 billion.
The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner, but Republican groups, including the Republican National Committee, quickly pointed out the revised estimate, and especially the estimated $145 billion added to it by Biden’s student loans programs.
The party has long accused the White House of unconstitutionally forgiving loans and has made the issue a political wedge with blue-collar voters who did not attend college. Meanwhile, Democrats have accused Republicans of hypocrisy, citing Trump’s 2017 tax law’s contribution to the debt.
Budget hawks reacted to the news by calling for both candidates to recommit to reining in spending.
“With debt growing out of control, we need leadership now more than ever. This should be domestic issue No. 1 in the presidential campaign,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said. “It’s time for Presidents Biden and Trump to put forward plans to fix our debt. And it’s long past time for Congress to act.”
Interest payments alone will cost 3.1% of gross domestic product this year and are expected to hit a record 4.1% next year, outpacing the amount spent on defense and Medicare. The CBO revised the 10-year debt projection up by $2.4 trillion, also due in large part to student debt writeoffs.
The national debt could reach 106.2% of gross domestic product by 2027, surpassing the prior record set just after the end of World War II, according to CRFB.
Trump was not a debt hawk while in office, adding roughly $8 trillion to the deficit during his first term. Some of Trump’s GOP primary rivals tried to make an issue of his debt spending during the debates, but he handily won the nomination.
Still, there is some evidence that voters remain concerned about the national debt.
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A Gallup poll that asked voters what they think is the most important problem facing the country found that 36% cited economic problems, including 5% who named the federal budget deficit or federal debt as the top issue.
An additional 21% of respondents cited “the government/poor leadership” as the country’s biggest problem.