Biden Touts Himself as a Budget-Cutter

Plus, the need for “no labels” journalism

President Biden

President Biden, at an April 18 campaign event in Philadelphia, rolled out what was to me a new campaign claim: that he’s a budget-cutter. “guess what? We’ve cut the budget by a lot of money: $172 billion so far. So, don’t tell me it can’t be done,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript of the event.

Count me skeptical on that claim. It’s true that federal outlays in current dollars have declined, according to the latest Office of Management and Budget figures, to $6.1 trillion in 2023 from a pandemic-relief spending-binge peak of $6.8 trillion in 2021. But the non-Covid normal baseline was $4.4 trillion in 2019. And OMB estimates spending of $6.9 trillion in 2024. Outlays as a percent of GDP have gone from 20.9 percent in 2019 to an estimated 24.6 percent in 2024. What scant spending restraint exists has to do partly with Republicans in Congress resisting Biden’s own budget requests.

Simply setting a goal of getting federal spending back to pre-pandemic levels, either in dollars or as a percent of GDP, would be a big deal. Being the accountant-in-chief isn’t, as a rule, the most inspiring role for a presidential candidate; frequently, it’s a trap. But for Biden to go around depicting himself as a budget-cutter while presiding over the most expensive federal budget in dollar terms in American history is something that risks striking a lot of American voters as phony.

The White House transcript, as is frequently the case, also contains strikethroughs and brackets that record Biden’s trouble speaking, even from a teleprompter, at these sort of events.

It was even harder to believe just two months later, on June the 5th [6th].  I had just graduated from law school, earned an incredible — and learned about an incredible man, later that night, had been assassinated….

Are you ready to choose freedom over [and] democracy?  Because that’s America.  (Applause.)

The New York Times has an article about this event by Nicholas Nehemas and Michael Gold that mentions neither of the blunders nor the budget cut claim. That creates an opening for publications like this one to fill in the gaps and let readers in on news that the left-leaning press doesn’t think is news.

Vice President Harris on the re-election campaign challenge: Vice President Harris, at a campaign event at a private residence in Los Angeles on April 16, 2024, according to a White House transcript: