I & I Editorial BoardSUNNY 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 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 (something for which she routinely brags). 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 Kamala 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.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
A simple set of measurements of the Monthly Treasury Statement’s Fig. 2 graphic reveals another slight-of-hand, which is that the sizes of the items are shown on a sliding scale, and are not consistently proportional to their dollar value.
As one example, the height of the deficit in pixels has been shrunk to one-half of what it should be if it were shown on the same scale as total revenues.
(On the revenue side of the graphic, revenues are depicted at 17 billion dollars per pixel, while the deficit portion of that side uses only one pixel per 35 billion dollars. This makes the revenues appear larger, and the deficit appear less significant by comparison.)
Overall revenues are shown at 17 billion dollars per pixel, but overall spending is shown at 19 billion dollars per pixel, making expenditures seem only nine-tenths as large as similarly-sized revenues.
Margaret Thatcher famously observed that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. This year we ran out $1.8 trillion dollars ago, but continuing to spend $1.37 for every dollar in revenue is not a good long-term plan.
Start really worrying when the debt payments drop to zero…because no one is willing to buy the debt…
This is outrageous. It’s unbelievable (and actually self defeating: We’ll be the first country who ever defeated ourselves by ignoring defense so that illegals can be more comfortable).
I’d like to know what I&I’s take is on the newest Trump tax consideration. I just heard on the radio (then saw on Bloomburg’s internet site) that Trump was considering exempting policemen, firemen and other 1st responders from paying interest taxes.
Pretty soon, with Trump’s idea to allow state tax deductions), the only ones to pay any taxes will be “you and me”!
Why in the heck should we cover states that decide to spend and so tax their citizens (who voted for the taxes) for the increased the state’s increased spending? And why in the heck should 1st responders get an exemption?
If the state tax allowed deductions is not bad enough (Trump made a good case in his 1st run NOT to allow such deductions. All it is doing is enabling the Blue State idiots to forswear (and shifting the burden to others) paying the taxes they voted on.)
Talk about “taxation without representation!” But now the gall: Considering exempting 1st responders who are suppose to serve us!!!???
Talk about a camel’s nose under the tent. This is going to start a new trend-and it’s not a good trend. Pretty soon all the bureaucrats and governmental weasels in Washington will be exempted.
Our Founders would shudder at this class based/elite based category of tax free slime buckets who while getting a paycheck from all of us also don’t have to pay taxes on it.
As I said the only ones in this country who are going to have to pay taxes are “you and me”!!!!