Biden Back at It, Blasting Off With His Economic Blarney

Speaker McCarthy and the Republican House have no intention of defaulting on the federal debt. They’ve said it time and again.

AP/Evan Vucci
President Biden speaks about the economy to union members at the IBEW Local Union 26, February 15, 2023, at Lanham, Maryland. AP/Evan Vucci

There he goes again, or, to be specific, there he goes again, again — President Biden is on the campaign trail, blasting off with blarney and misinformation.  

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Mr. Biden is incapable of telling the truth about the economy or his own policies. So here he is in Maryland with some of today’s blarney: “Some of our Republican friends in the House are talking about taking the economy hostage over the full faith and credit of the United States. I made it clear in the State of the Union, I will not negotiate whether or not we pay our debt. I will not allow this nation to default.” 

I mean, really? Speaker McCarthy and the Republican House have no intention of defaulting on the federal debt. They’ve said it time and again. It’s incredibly irresponsible for Mr. Biden to say he refuses to negotiate. That makes him responsible for some kind of debt default. 

He is in denial, by the way, that the House has gone Republican and that it has the power of the purse.  

As has always been the case down through the years, debt ceiling negotiations are the surest way to generate budget savings and actually reduce deficits and debt. Notably, the most recent case, with Speaker Boehner and President Obama in 2011, saved more than a trillion dollars in the next two years. That’s more or less what House Republicans want to do today.  

If Mr. Biden wants to stay home in his Delaware basement reading his illegal classified documents and not talking to anybody, he’s the guy to blame. 

Then, of course, he goes into this 10-Pinocchio untruth riff he has about the GOP and its so-called $3 trillion debt plan: “Look, folks, let’s be crystal clear about what’s happening. If you add up the proposals of Republican friends, my Republican friends have offered just so far what they’ve offered. They’ve offered these now, it would add more than $3 trillion to the debt over 10 years.” 

Now, this is pure Pinocchio blarney.  

First up, his 87,000 new IRS agents chasing after the tips of waitresses, cab drivers, and doormen will not generate any significant revenues. This has been tried before — and has always failed. Of course, it’s middle- and lower-class working people who pay the burden, because the well-to-do have tax lawyers to protect them.  

Then, he’s got some more blarney about lower prescription drug costs, which will also never pan out, as price controls never do.  

Yet most of Mr. Biden’s misinformation is about making the Trump tax cuts permanent. He thinks it’s a $2.7 trillion loss, but as we’ve shown over and over and the Congressional Budget Office itself shows, there was a revenue increase of $250 billion in the first two years of the Trump tax cuts.  

In other words, the taxpayers made money and the budget deficit came down. 

By the way, the biggest beneficiaries, contra Mr. Biden, were middle-income blue-collar people and minorities, who saw the most gain in real wages. This has been proved over and over, but Mr. Biden keeps spreading the same old nonsense. 

Now, finally, the CBO just came out today with new baseline budget projections for the next 10 years. After all of the Biden Democrats’ new spending, the total deficit over the next 10 years is estimated at $20 trillion. That’s right, $20 trillion.  

Total budget outlays are estimated to rise by $80 trillion. That’s right, $80 trillion. Those are CBO numbers.  

If you track the yearly deficits from Bidenomics, you go from $1.6 trillion up to $1.9 trillion by 2028, then up to $2.9 trillion in 2033. Those are the CBO numbers. 

There is no deficit reduction. There is no debt reduction. There is no spending restraint. Meanwhile, there is no prosperity either. 

With all this spending and taxing and regulating, economic growth is estimated at a measly 1.8 percent a year. That is not prosperity. What we had for more than 50 years was 3.5 percent a year, which is closer to decent growth and opportunities.  

We haven’t had this for the last two decades, though, and this would be a third decade of economic underperformance.  

Of course there’s no prosperity. The size of the federal government has gone to a historically high 25 percent of GDP, while for the last half-century it’s averaged only 20 percent. This is Bidenomics: Spend it, tax it, regulate it.  

The CBO expects inflation to stay down around 2 percent in the next 10 years. I would suggest to the CBO: Think again, with this kind of spending and borrowing.  

You know, Mr. Biden, you should really get serious. You ought to face the music. You should do your job and negotiate with the other branch of government.  

I’ll just say here at the end: Save America. Stop the crazy spending, borrowing, regulating, and inflating. Or, frankly, better yet, get a new president. There, I’ve said it. 

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.


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