President Joe Biden prepares to have lunch with Vice President Kamala Harris after placing a carry-out order at local restaurant “Ghost Burger”, Tuesday, January 17, 2023, in the Oval Office. He had just recorded a video about the importance of supporting small businesses. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
Driving on the Wrong Side of the Street
Can you name one person who has supported has supported massive government expansion even during the brief period when that person was not occupying federal office? Well, James Freeman can. In the WSJ, Mr. Freeman reports that the person has occupied senior federal office for all but four years of the last half-century. Now he is in the White House.
Can you name anyone who bears more responsibility than our president for the staggering debt burden now being imposed upon America’s children? Beyond Mr. Biden’s Senate body of work and his presidential spending blowout for a pandemic emergency that had already ended, there are also the specific policies on student loans that recently accelerated the speed at which Washington collided with the statutory debt limit.
Consistent with his Beltway history, continues Mr. Freeman, President Biden “seems to be making no effort at all to restore sound fiscal policy.”
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:
Press reports indicate that President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget will be submitted this March, well after the statutory deadline of the first Monday in February. This is the third year in a row that the President has missed the budget submission deadline, and it likely means that the rest of the Congressional budget process will be delayed.
Kent Lassman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute tweets:
Congress has passed, and presidents of both parties have signed, massive increases to America’s debt obligations.
They are all culpable for the current situation and no amount of finger pointing can change that.
He continues:
- The debt ceiling will be raised.
Either it will be sooner or later. It will have either long-term effects on America’s credit rating or none. It will come either with concessions to members of Congress who are newly appreciative of spending restraint or without them.
But it will be raised because, with enough damage and economic pain, not only a majority but a supermajority will vote for it.
- President Biden is irresponsible for unilaterally refusing to talk about the issue with leaders in another branch of government.
(Joe Biden) may believe this makes him tough and resolute. He may believe the politics of the situation are on his side, but that is not how serious leaders treat issues of critical importance they helped create and are responsible for resolving.
Refusing to confer with House Republicans is also politically risky because, by drawing an absolute position regarding any negotiation or compromise, he undermines himself if and when he ends up at the table.
Readers and especially their offspring may despair that fiscal discipline has been missing on Capitol Hill, but, as Mr. Lassman notes, “it does not negate the benefits of its rediscovery.”
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