Biden touts plunging deficit as GOP prepares for spending fights


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The Biden administration said Friday that the federal deficit fell by half from the year before, as Washington girds for new battles over taxes and spending with interest rates rising and Republicans expected to take back at least one branch of Congress in the midterm elections.

In a statement, the Treasury Department and White House Office of Management and Budget said the annual deficit plummeted from $2.8 trillion in 2021 to roughly $1.4 trillion in 2022 — a decline driven primarily by the expiration of trillions in pandemic-era emergency spending. The gap between revenue and spending also shrank in part due to stronger-than-expected tax receipts, as a booming U.S. economy and large corporate profits helped bring in additional funds to federal coffers.

“The federal deficit went up every year in the Trump administration — every single year he was president,” President Biden told reporters, criticizing the GOP tax law of 2017 that added more than $1.5 trillion to the deficit. “On my watch, things have been different — the deficit has come down both years I’ve been in office, and I’ve just signed legislation that will reduce it even more in the decades to come.”

On Oct. 21, President Biden celebrated the $1.4 trillion drop in the federal deficit seen in 2022, the largest one-year decline in U.S. history. (Video: The Washington Post)

Biden also criticized congressional Republicans for pushing to expand the Trump tax cuts, arguing such a move would dramatically increase federal deficits. He accused the GOP of pushing cuts to Social Security — though Republicans have said their proposed changes to Social Security would not cut benefit amounts. And he criticized his opponents’ push to repeal key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, his signature economic law that passed over the summer.

“If Republicans get their way, the deficit is going to soar, the burden is going to fall on the middle-class … They’re not going to stop there,” Biden said. “It’s MAGA-mega trickle-down.”

Biden budget pivots to deficit concerns while boosting military, domestic programs

The new deficit estimate — widely expected by budget analysts — could help set the stage for fresh fights on Capitol Hill over taxes and revenue. GOP leaders have suggested in recent days that if they have more power in Congress next year, they may be willing to leverage a government shutdown or breach of the federal borrowing limit to demand spending cuts. That could lead to a reprise of the battles during the Obama administration, when lawmakers came close to triggering a worldwide economic calamity by failing to pay off America’s loan obligations.

While Biden is eager to tout the shrinking deficit, conservatives point out that it dropped relative to last year in large part because of the end of large spending programs he approved.

“It is terribly disingenuous for the White House to take credit for reducing the deficit simply because temporary pandemic spending expired on schedule,” said Brian Riedl, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, and former chief economist to Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “Especially when they had helped drive up the deficit with the American Rescue Plan.”

The debates over the deficit will be further intensified by rising interest rates, which dramatically push up the cost of federal borrowing. The Federal Reserve has significantly raised interest rates as part of its battle against inflation, and it is expected to continue that campaign for the foreseeable future. That could add trillions to the cost of taking on debt, said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president for policy at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that pushes for lower deficits.

The Congressional Budget Office, Congress’s nonpartisan budget scorekeeper, has said interest payments on the debt alone could reach $1 trillion per year — roughly double…



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