Biden’s New Spending Whopper From trillions to zero in a Beltway minute. By James Freeman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-new-spending-whopper-11632780042?mod=opinion_lead_pos11
Where have all the “fact checkers” gone? On Saturday night President Joe Biden took to social media to repeat his new multi-trillion-dollar falsehood. And much of the press corps has nothing to offer in response but approbation.
A Journal editorial published online Friday night noted the latest Biden tall tale about his effort to enact a historic spending binge, estimated to cost $3.5 trillion, but perhaps as much as $5 trillion or more:
The agenda that was being sold a few weeks ago as the modern equivalent of the New Deal or Great Society is actually so modest it doesn’t cost a thing.
“Every time I hear this is going to cost A, B, C, or D—the truth is, based on the commitment that I made, it’s going to cost nothing,” President Biden said at a press conference Friday, trying to restore momentum to the reconciliation package, “because we’re going to raise the revenue.”
We didn’t know that when you pay for something that makes it free… And so a talking point is born, or at least trying to be: The largest tax increase as a share of GDP and the largest entitlement expansion since the 1960s costs nothing. And money grows on trees.
Instead of correcting his multi-trillion-dollar whopper, the President then took to Twitter on Saturday night to falsely claim:
My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars.
One does not need to venture beyond Mr. Biden’s own website to see that the costs of his agenda are enormous, and therefore that this claim is false.
The Biden tweet then made another claim which essentially refuted the first one—acknowledging that there will be significant costs, and that taxpayers will bear them:
Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America.
Mr. Biden’s tweet concluded with a wildly optimistic forecast that is likely to be off by 12 figures:
And it adds zero dollars to the national debt.
Yet instead of churning out “fact checks” noting the fiscal enormity of the Biden agenda, media folk have largely decided to treat Mr. Biden’s brazen deception as some sort of triumph. Seung Min Kim and Tony Romm of the Washington Post write :
President Biden promised Friday that his sweeping domestic agenda package will cost “nothing” because Democrats will pay for it through tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations, a show of confidence despite the struggles of congressional Democrats to bridge internal divisions on myriad issues.
“What’s the price of Biden’s plan? Democrats drive for zero,” says the headline on an Associated Press story. Does this mean that Democrats have realized the U.S. economy has no need for this reckless spending spree after all?
One could certainly understand if Democrats were to reach that conclusion. The Journal’s John McCormick reports today:
New orders for products meant to last at least three years increased 1.8% to a record seasonally adjusted $263.5 billion in August as compared with July, the Commerce Department said Monday, marking the biggest increase since May. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a 0.6% increase.
Orders increased 0.5% in July from the prior month, up from an earlier estimate for that month that had shown a 0.1% decline. Demand for durable goods has increased in 15 of the last 16 months after an April 2020 low point.
Unfortunately the Associated Press headline was not bringing news that Democrats have stepped back from the fiscal ledge but only an A.P. alignment with White House messaging. The A.P.’s Josh Boak writes:
What will it cost to enact President Joe Biden’s massive expansion of social programs?
Congress has authorized spending up to $3.5 trillion over a decade, but Biden is prodding Democrats to fully cover the cost of the legislation — by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, negotiating the price of prescription drugs and dialing up other sources of federal revenue such as increased IRS funding.
The idea is that [the] entire package should pay for itself.
Yet as the A.P. just acknowledged, the massive plan will be funded by taxpayers, not by “itself.”
Then just 18 paragraphs later, the Associated Press manages to divulge that even if one accepts the President’s misleading definition of “cost,” Mr. Biden is likely to fail on his own terms. Writes Mr. Boak:
It’s not entirely clear whether Biden’s claim of “zero” cost is feasible under the 10-year outlook used by the [Congressional Budget Office] to assess the economic impacts of legislation. Biden’s own budget officials earlier this year estimated that his agenda would increase the national debt by nearly $1.4 trillion over the decade.
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