Here’s a legacy that now-former President Biden failed to mention in his self-congratulatory farewell address last week: an exploding federal debt — $36.4 trillion, up from $28.4 trillion in 2021.
That’s the past, what about the future?
The Congressional Budget Office just released its Budget and Economic Outlook, 2025-2035, and it’s not a pretty picture. The federal deficit for fiscal 2025 (which began Oct. 1, 2024) will be $1.9 trillion. The deficit is the amount the federal government is expected to spend this year over and above the revenue it takes in.
The situation doesn’t improve in later years. The CBO projects the federal deficit will gradually rise, hitting $2.7 trillion by 2035. And yes, entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare play a role in that growth, but much of that future deficit spending, plus the interest on all that new debt, is a direct result of legislation passed by Joe Biden and Democrats.
For example, even with entitlement spending the federal deficit under President Trump was $0.67 trillion in 2017, $0.78 trillion in 2018, and $0.98 trillion in 2019. Biden’s annual deficits, in contrast, were well over $1 trillion every year he was in office — $1.38 trillion in 2022, $1.70 trillion in 2023, and $1.83 trillion in 2024. (I have left out the $3.13 trillion in Trump’s last year, 2020, and $2.77 trillion in 2021, Biden’s first year, because both years were larger due to the government’s response to the pandemic and lockdowns.)
The annual federal deficits — and therefore the total federal debt — would have been even larger had the courts, and especially the U.S. Supreme Court, not blocked some of Biden’s unconstitutional efforts to hand out even more taxpayer dollars.
That’s why Trump’s Treasury secretary nominee, Scott Bessent, told senators at his Senate confirmation hearing, “We do not have a revenue problem in the United States of America. We have a spending problem.”
He’s right, and the new para-government agency, the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, to be run by Elon Musk, is supposed to identify billions — perhaps trillions — of dollars in cuts in spending along with regulations.
The public is apparently on board. According to a December ActiVote poll, “62% of respondents support DOGE’s mission to reduce government costs….”
Critics will claim the only way to cut spending is by undermining some of the most important government services. And they will no doubt tell horror stories, amplified by the media, of millions of people harmed by potential cuts. This is an old fearmongering ruse used to turn the public against any spending cuts by implying that people will be starving and dying in the streets.
Don’t believe it. There is a lot of low-hanging, budget-cutting fruit. The recent Festivus Report from the office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) highlights not just unnecessary but ludicrous federal spending: “over $1 trillion in government waste, including things like ice-skating drag queens, a $12 Million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082on Ukrainian influencers, and more!”
The report adds, “No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.” Yes, they do. Need more examples from the report?
The Department of State allocated $32,596.12 for breakdancing.
The Agency for International Development is spending $20 million on “Ahlan Simsim,” a new Sesame Street show in Iraq.
The Department of the Interior spent $720,479 on wetland conservation projects for ducks in Mexico.
The Department of State is spending $123,066 to teach Kyrgyzstan youth how to go viral online.
And then there’s the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars lost in fraud and “improper payments” — $236 billion in the Government Accountability Office’s most recent report.
It’s a big job, and it won’t be finished in one year, even assuming the DOGE is implemented as promised. But cutting billions of dollars in spending in the first year means those costs won’t be repeated the next year and the year after that, even as DOGE identifies more potential cuts. As the government’s need to borrow money declines, the economy will grow even stronger, which will boost government revenue, further reducing the need to borrow. Call it the prosperity cycle.
We don’t know yet if Trump and Republicans will dramatically cut federal spending. Their words are encouraging, though Republicans’ past actions haven’t been. But if they are serious about turning back Biden’s failed legacies, ending the trillion-dollar-plus deficits would be a good start.
Merrill Matthews is a public policy and political analyst and the co-author of “On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.”
