[Hoot Gibson]

Let's discuss Joe Biden's irresponsible tax, borrow, and spend 2022 budget. Has there ever been a more fiscally irresponsible budget in the history of this nation? Less than 6 months into his presidency, Biden has managed to destabilize the Middle East, weaken our military, and propose a budget full of new entitlement spending. 

It is as if Biden just awoke from a nap that began when he entered Congress at the age of 29. He has learned nothing from his mistakes or from the mistakes of any of his predecessors over the past four decades.

TRILLIONS
Joe Biden’s Massive $6 Trillion Dollar Budget: A Ticking Time Bomb?

The Biden administration has released its federal budget for 2022, which envisions a large increase in the size of government. As the pandemic recedes and economic growth resumes, policymakers should be paring back spending and deficits to normal levels. Unfortunately, the Biden spending plan risks following last year’s crisis with a new fiscal crisis as it tries to sustain spending and borrowing at dangerously high levels.

The chart below shows federal spending and revenues as a percent of gross domestic product. Federal spending trended up from 17.7 percent under President Clinton in 2000 to 21.0 percent under President Trump in 2019. Spending jumped to 31.2 percent in 2020 with the pandemic, which was higher than the 24.4 percent peak reached during the Great Recession. Pandemic‐related spending is expected to decline the next few years, but Biden is proposing that overall spending and deficits remain at substantially heightened levels.

[Image: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/file...k=QtFWjC_O]

The Biden budget shows federal debt held by the public rising from 100 percent of GDP in 2020 to 117 percent by 2031. We are not at war, and yet that level of debt is higher than the 31 percent reached in the Civil War, 33 percent reached in World War I, and 106 percent reached in World War II.

Regarding the budget, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, “I believe it is a fiscally responsible program.” Let’s scale the budget figures to family size to see how off‐base that claim is. Biden proposes to spend $7.2 trillion this year relying on $3.7 trillion in borrowing, and he proposes to push up accumulated debt from $24 trillion this year to $39 trillion by 2031. That is like a family spending $72,000 this year putting $37,000 on credit cards, and then pushing up family debt from $240,000 to $390,000 as it continues spending more than it earns. Would any financial advisor tell the family that was responsible?