During his belated address to a joint session of Congress, President Joe Biden boasted of our economic recovery, yet he inexplicably relied on the calculations of the International Monetary Fund instead of his own nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“The International Monetary Fund is now estimating our economy will grow at a rate of more than 6% this year,” Biden said. “That will be the fastest pace of economic growth in this country in nearly four decades.”
If we do indeed reach 6% growth for the year, Biden would be correct. But the CBO has estimated the economy will only grow by 3.7% for the year, bringing us just back to pre-pandemic levels. The main question here is if Biden truly believed the IMF over the CBO, why would he push a narrowly divided Congress for unprecedented spending unrelated to the artificial supply shocks of the novel coronavirus? If the economy already will grow so fast without his big spending, why do the big spending?
Among Biden’s list of demands are $1.8 trillion for an “American Families Plan” that inexplicably creates universal public pre-K while existing public schools refuse to open, along with a $2.3 trillion “American Jobs Plan.” On top of the $1.9 trillion already spent on the “American Rescue Plan,” that would bring Biden’s total goal of spending in his first 100 days in office to $6 trillion. This would triple our federal budget deficit to more than $9 trillion on top of an existing $28 trillion dollar debt slated to grow so grossly that within 30 years, our payments on interest accrued from our federal spending would eat 9% of our total economic output.
The coronavirus recession was more manufactured by onerous lockdown measures than anything, and the rebound came amid an extremely healthy 2019 economy buoyed by tight labor markets, strong consumer confidence, and reliable investment. If anything, the ability of a president to botch this return amid the release of miraculous vaccines would prove improbable.
But of course, it’s not as though Biden believes he needs an extra $6 trillion in spending. Rather, if he wants to be remembered as anything other than the buffer between President Donald Trump and a nation who hadn’t ever loathed an incumbent quite so much, he has to prove he can be as progressive as the ideological leaders in his party. That means federalizing what our founders intended to remain local and spending money our grandchildren will have to pay back in our stead.
