Biden’s 2025 Budget Spends Too Much Money On All The Wrong Things
Even compared to the Covid spending binge of recent years, Biden’s budget is insanely large — increasing federal spending by 82.5 percent
Don’t tell me your values. Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value,” Joe Biden frequently proclaims. Biden’s 2025 budget proposal shows what he values: too much spending and spending on the wrong priorities.
Rather than trimming the federal government’s sails after the Covid spending binge led to a prolonged bout of “Bidenflation,” the administration’s budget would accelerate the growth in spending that has seen federal debt balloon. And it would do so while not spending enough to secure our nation, and its border, from growing threats overseas.
Spending on Steroids
Other sources have spent the two weeks since the budget’s formal release dissecting specific provisions and proposals within it. But it’s worth focusing on the macro-level issues.
Start with the topline spending number for this year’s budget, which covers the fiscal year beginning this Oct. 1 and going through Sept. 30, 2025. The estimate of spending under Biden’s proposal? $7.3 trillion. Or, to be precise, $7,265,963,000,000.
It’s hard to imagine a number that big. But to break it down on a more granular level, the total comes to just under $20 billion in federal spending per day. At that rate, the federal government would spend down the net worth of people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos in just over a week. (So much for the idea that taxing “millionaires and billionaires” can solve all our fiscal problems.)
The number also looks immense by historical comparisons. In fiscal year 2017, which included Barack Obama’s last few months in office, the federal government spent just a hair under $4 trillion. If Biden’s estimate holds true, that means federal spending will have increased by about $3.3 trillion, or nearly 82.5 percent, over the past eight years.
How many Americans’ incomes have gone up by 82.5 percent during that time? Mine sure hasn’t. And according to the budget, the economy will grow by only 51.4 percent from 2017 through 2025, meaning government is growing faster than the economy and crowding out the private sector in the process.
Even compared to the Covid spending binge of recent years, Biden’s budget looks ridiculously large. In fiscal year 2023, the federal government spent “only” $6.1 trillion. The budget proposal would lead to spending growth of 18.4 percent between 2023 and 2025. That’s growth coming on top of the Covid levels of spending.
