By I & I Editorial Board, Issues & Insights | October 19, 2024
SUNNY HOSTIN: Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?
KAMALA HARRIS: There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.
On Friday, the Treasury Department released a report showing the kind of impact Kamala Harris is talking about. If nothing else does, it should cost her the election.
The latest monthly Treasury report shows spending and revenues for the full fiscal year 2024, which ended in September.
Among the terrible results: The federal deficit topped $1.8 trillion in 2024 – the third highest in history and eclipsed only by the two COVID-19 panic spending years.
That’s not for lack of revenues, which were up by nearly half a trillion dollars this year. Spending under Biden-Harris this fiscal year climbed more than $617 billion – a 10% increase.
But the real shocker is the explosive growth in interest payments on the national debt.
These payments hit $882 billion in FY 2024, the Treasury report says. That’s a 35% jump from last year.
And it’s $8 billion more than we spent on national defense.
This marks the first time in our nation’s history that interest on the debt has exceeded defense spending. And the gap is on track to rapidly widen – with the government spending $200 billion more in interest than in protecting America from her enemies by 2029.
Why the massive run-up in interest costs? Blame Harris’ tie-breaking votes in Congress (something she routinely brags about). Because of them, Biden-Harris added trillions in new spending at a time when the economy had already fully recovered from the COVID-19 panic. That sparked a huge increase in inflation, which in turn drove up interest rates.
More debt and higher interest rates meant a sharp increase in the cost of financing that debt.
How do we know Biden and Harris are to blame? Before they took office, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected net interest payments for the next decade, based on the policies that Donald Trump had in place.
The CBO said that, had Biden not spent us to the poorhouse, interest payments on the national debt this year would have been only $284 billion. (See chart above.)
In other words, Harris and her tie-breaking votes are responsible for a 210% increase in interest costs this year alone.
What would Harris do about this terrible state of affairs if she were elected president? No one has bothered to ask her.
But we do know that she wants to do exactly what she and Biden have already done: add trillions of dollars of inflationary spending, impose economically ruinous tax hikes, and pile on still more growth-killing regulations.
Harris is right about one thing. It is time to turn the page – before it’s too late.
Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists of the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day – without fear or favor.
Original article link
