Interest costs will outpace defense and non-defense discretionary spending by 2030

In the short run, the Federal Reserve has saved President Joe Biden from himself. The central bank’s monetary tightening has sufficiently offset the explicitly inflationary fiscal policy of the White House to the extent that inflation fell from its near-double-digit highs last year to about 4.6%, per the Fed’s preferred measure of core personal consumption expenditures. But in the long run, the Fed’s mandate to restore price stability will run afoul of the government’s bipartisan resolve to continue to expand spending — and worse, do nothing about projected mandatory spending explosions.