Joe Biden’s extremist spending is a danger to the US 

Joe Biden says “Extreme Maga Republicans” want to wreck the economy by cutting federal spending. And yet, it is his administration’s blowout budgets that are extreme. Never in this country’s history, with the exception of two emergencies — World War II and COVID — have we spent taxpayer money so recklessly. 

Consider: in just the past three months, the federal debt of the United States jumped by $1 trillion. The U.S. now owes $34 trillion, up from $33 trillion at the end of September. For reference, it took 198 years of borrowing for the government to rack up its first trillion dollars of debt; that milestone was first reached in 1981.  

Putting that gargantuan figure in context, debt held by the public in 1981 amounted to about 25 percent of GDP; today’s debt amounts to more than 100 percent of GDP. Our debt is bigger than the entire economy of every single country in the world but the U.S. and China. 

The Peterson Foundation further puts our debt in perspective, noting that “$34 trillion is enough to cover a public four-year degree for every graduating high-school student for 106 years.”  

This should worry everyone. There’s a reason that Fitch Ratings downgraded United States’ credit rating from “AAA” to “AA+” last year, several years after S&P made the same decision. The last ratings agency still awarding U.S. debt its platinum rating is Moody’s; last year they lowered the outlook to “negative” from “stable,” citing a drop in “debt affordability.”    

The Biden White House dishonestly blames GOP-led tax cuts under Donald Trump for “90% of the debt increase.” For the record: under the Trump administration, the debt went up significantly only after Congress passed relief measures aimed at keeping the COVID-impaired economy afloat. In his first three years, the debt rose by $3.3 trillion — too much, for sure, but nothing compared to the $6.25 trillion jump in debt during Biden’s first three years. And there has been no emergency to excuse Biden’s spending.  

Here is the truth: Joe Biden’s entire legacy is built on doling out unprecedented amounts of money. He and his administration have not fixed anything. They have not resolved how to manage the southern border or improved our public schools. They have not improved the efficiency of any aspect of the federal government, like updating the woefully antiquated (and possibly dangerous) air traffic control system or streamlining the permitting process for infrastructure projects.  

Joe Biden has no idea how to do those things. As a life-long member of Congress who has had zero experience in the private sector, his entire resume depends on how much money he can wrest from taxpayers and how effectively he funnels it to critical voter blocks. That’s what Congress does. 

So, when White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre says Biden has “done more” in his three years in office than any president, what she means is that he has passed more bills and spent more money. The dividends from all that spending are so far invisible. We have not increased manufacturing jobs — manufacturing has been in a slump for more than a year — we have not modernized our infrastructure in any meaningful way nor bent the arc of carbon emissions.  

In fact, this inept government, which has taken upon itself to single-handedly dole out $370 billion to climate projects, all under the watchful eye of political apparatchik John Podesta, cannot even get the money spent. Just recently, a monster wind project offshore New York, hailed by the White House as a Bidenomics success story, was cancelled, just weeks after it was green-lighted by the administration. It is not alone. Other wind projects in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey have met similar fates.    

President Biden has told the public numerous whoppers about how many jobs he has created, what spurred inflation and how the economy was “on the brink” when he took office. It will surprise few that when Biden claimed in September that “I was able to cut the federal debt by $1.7 trillion over the first two-and-a — two years,” he was not telling the truth.   

Does it matter? Yes.  

According to a Bloomberg study from November, the servicing on that massive pile of indebtedness will top $1 trillion this year, up from an eye-watering $879 billion in the fiscal year that ended last September. What that means is that money available for federal programs — for veterans’ programs, or student loans or to fund the FBI — will be edged out by the need to pay interest on our debt. In the current year, we will spend less on the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Homeland Security and Energy, and HUD and the FDIC, than we will spend on servicing our debt. 

People generally do not respond to big numbers or big problems until it impacts them directly. The flood of migrants entering our country illegally since Biden took office didn’t alarm voters until they started causing havoc in their home towns. Similarly, most people were not concerned about Joe Biden’s out-of-control spending spree until it sparked inflation, which boosted the cost of everything and lowered their standard of living. 

Only then did some voters begin to call for reduced government outlays and back candidates (mostly Republicans) who vowed to rein in spending. The calls should get louder — and more broad-based — if voter demands go unmet, if they are asked to pay higher taxes, or if inflation persists, causing the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates more slowly than investors are now expecting. 

We are set for more partisan squabbling over spending, with Republicans in Congress demanding cuts. Joe Biden is opposed, forever favoring more lavish outlays like increased cancelation of student debts. Instead, he will propose higher taxes to counter ever-larger deficits. Come November, voters will choose: continued out-of-control and unsustainable spending or a return to sanity.  

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. Follow her on Twitter @lizpeek.