WASHINGTON – White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday called President Biden “fiscally responsible” – but could not explain the latest dismal deficit numbers, saying in an aside, “Talk to the economists.”
Biden’s representative dismissed statistics showing the federal deficit is on track to double this year, blaming the weakness on “uncertain” factors — but then declined to be more specific.
“The deficit from year to year can be volatile, and that’s how we track it, but the reality is that the president has a real plan, as we have drawn up several times, to reduce the deficit,” claimed Jean-Pierre at his regular briefing in response to a question from a Time reporter.
The scribe followed up, “Why did it go up? Why is the deficit increasing?”
Jean-Pierre replied, “I’m just saying, it can be year to year – it can be very volatile.”
When challenged again for some reason, Jean-Pierre repeated, “I just put it, it can be very volatile. … That’s how it is, from year to year, it can change.”
A reporter from The Post interjected, “Why?”
He replied, “Talk to an economist, and they’ll tell you specifically.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday called President Biden “fiscally responsible.” AFP via Getty Images
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has projected that the federal deficit for fiscal 2023, which ends on September 30, will reach $2 trillion — the highest ever when excluding the COVID-19 pandemic, even though the Democratic president has repeatedly claimed that he has taken steps to reduce the annual deficit.
Biden’s claims to reduce the deficit are often criticized by fact-checkers because spending remains at near record levels and most of the reduction since 2020 has come from the end of COVID-19 emergency spending rather than his own actions.
The increase in the deficit is due to factors such as stimulated federal spending and the fact that higher interest rates – used to tame inflation – have increased the cost of US borrowing, the Washington Post reported.
“We don’t see the Republicans having a real plan” to deal with the situation, Jean-Pierre told reporters – as House conservatives rallied to sink a short-term spending bill this month in an effort to secure spending cuts.
“The deficit has fallen by more than $1 trillion under this president, and he has signed legislation to reduce the deficit by another $1 trillion — so the president’s budget will reduce the deficit by another $2.5 trillion by cutting wasteful spending for wasteful special interests and making corporations -big companies and rich people pay their fair share,” said Jean-Pierre.
“On the other hand, what you see from our Republican friends on the other side is, you know — especially what President Trump and the congressional Republicans, what they did during his administration is they added $2 trillion to the deficit with tax cuts. which is clearly biased towards rich and large companies.
“The president believes in moving forward with his economic plan in a fiscally responsible way, and that’s what we will continue to do here,” Jean-Pierre said.
Representative Biden rejected statistics showing the federal deficit is on track to double this year.AP
Biden’s top spokeswoman also talked about Biden’s broader fiscal agenda.
“What we know for sure is that [the] trickle-down economics doesn’t work, you hear us talk about all the time when we talk about [how] Bidenomics is building the economy from the bottom up, the middle out — that’s the president’s plan, that’s what he’s going to continue to do,” he said. “And that’s what he’s going to do in a fiscally responsible way.”
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Treasury Department data showed the deficit for fiscal 2023 at about $1.61 trillion in July—meaning it was already the highest when excluding 2020 and 2021.
The deficit increased in each of former President Donald Trump’s first three years in office before jumping from nearly $1 trillion to a record $3.1 trillion in fiscal 2020 as the government covered most of the nation’s payroll during the early phase of the pandemic.
The deficit fell to $2.8 trillion in fiscal 2021, even as Democrats passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill without Republican support in Congress, which critics say helped cause the worst inflation in four decades, peaking at an annual rate of 9.1% last June.
Harvard economist Jason Furman, a top adviser to the Obama administration, told the Washington Post that this year’s surge was comparable to the “great crisis.
“To see this in an economy with low unemployment is truly amazing. There’s never been anything like it,” Furman said. “A good, strong economy with no new emergency spending — yet a deficit like this. The fact that it’s so big in one year makes you think it must be something weird and weird going on.”
The national debt has increased by more than $5 trillion since Biden took office, from $27.75 trillion to about $32.8 trillion. Under Trump, it rose to nearly $8 trillion – up from nearly $20 trillion.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
