The national debt of the United States will balloon by almost $20 trillion in the next decade with the spending included in President Joe Biden’s $6.9 trillion budget proposal that he released on Thursday.
Under the president’s budget plan for fiscal year 2024, the gross national debt would skyrocket to almost $51 trillion by 2033 — up from the current $31.5 trillion.
The federal debt as a percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) would balloon to a record 110% by 2033, which is up from 98% this year. The share of debt the U.S. public holds would surge $19 trillion to $43.6 trillion over the next decade. This would shatter a record that has stood since the end of World War II.
A burgeoning federal debt signifies more taxpayer dollars will go toward paying interest payments on past spending instead of funding needed projects in the future.
According to the president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Maya MacGuineas, the spending projections in President Biden’s plan are “excessive.”
“At $6.9 trillion, spending next year would be higher than any time during the pandemic and about $2.5 trillion above the pre-pandemic level, representing growth of 55 percent.”
Since the president took office in 2021, the administration has approved more than $5 trillion in new debt tied to executive orders and legislation. That includes a broader spending bill dubbed the “Inflation Reduction Act” that passed along party lines and a physical infrastructure bill that received bipartisan support last year.
Biden’s budget includes $5.5 trillion in tax hikes over the next decade
President Biden’s newest budget proposal includes calls for $5.5 trillion in tax hikes over the next decade to offset the price tag of several projects, including a pay bump for federal workers, extending Medicare benefits, a pay hike for federal workers, and climate change-related initiatives.
“It will require presidential leadership to enact real changes, and this budget does not go nearly far enough to make reining in our dangerous debt levels a top national priority,” said MacGuineas.
The White House asserts that the budget plan if passed, would reduce the federal budget deficit by almost $3 trillion over time.
The president’s proposal emerged as Democrats and Republicans remain deadlocks in discussions to raise the federal debt ceiling to avoid a possible economic disaster that a default by the United States would bring. Republicans are almost certain to reject the president’s plan and have demanded spending cuts as a precondition to increasing the federal borrowing limi
