White House says ‘talk to an economist’ about why deficit is doubling

WASHINGTON — White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday called President Biden “fiscally responsible” — but couldn’t explain away the latest dismal deficit figures, saying dismissively, “Talk to an economist.”

The Biden rep brushed off statistics indicating the federal deficit is on track to double this year, blaming the tenuous situation on “volatile” factors — but then refusing to be more specific.

“Deficits from year to year can be volatile, and so that’s kind of how we have tracked that, but the reality is the president has a real plan, as we have laid out multiple times, to reduce the deficit,” Jean-Pierre claimed at her regular briefing in response to a question from a Time reporter.

The scribe followed up, “What is the reason it’s going up, though? Why is the deficit increasing?”

Jean-Pierre responded, “i just said, it can be year to year — it can be very volatile.”

When challenged again for a reason, Jean-Pierre repeated, “I just laid out, it can be very volatile. … That’s the way it is, from year to year, it can be variable.”

A reporter from The Post interjected, “Why?”

She shot back, “Talk to an economist, and they can tell you specifically.”

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has projected that the federal deficit for fiscal 2023, which ends Sept. 30, will hit $2 trillion — the highest ever when excluding the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the Democratic president repeatedly claiming that he’s taken strides to slash the annual shortfall.

Biden’s claims to have reduced the deficit regularly garner criticism from fact-checkers because spending remains at near-record highs and much of the reduction since 2020 came from the expiration of COVID-19 emergency spending rather than his own actions.

The deficit increase is caused by factors such as boosted federal spending and the fact that higher interest rates — deployed to tame inflation — have increased US borrowing costs, the Washington Post reported.

“We don’t see republicans having a real plan” to address the situation, Jean-Pierre told reporters — as House conservatives rally to sink a short-term spending bill this month in a bid to secure spending cuts.

“The deficit has fallen more than $1 trillion under this president, and he has signed legislation to cut the deficit by another $1 trillion — so the president’s budget would reduce the deficit by a further $2.5 trillion by cutting wasteful spending on wasteful special interests and making big corporations and the rich pay their fair share,” Jean-Pierre contended.

“By contrast, what you’re seeing from our Republican colleagues on the other side is that, you know — especially what President Trump and congressional Republicans, what they did during his administration is that they added $2 trillion to the deficit with a tax cut that obviously skewed obviously to the wealthy and large corporations.

“The president believes in moving forward with his economic plan in a fiscally responsible way, and so that’s what we’re going to continue to do here,” Jean-Pierre said.

The top Biden spokeswoman also spoke about Biden’s broader fiscal agenda.

“What we know for sure is that [the] trickle-down economy does not work, you hear us talk about all the time when we talk about [how] Bidenomics is building an economy from the bottom up, middle out — that’s the president’s plan, that’s what he’s going to continue to do,” she said. “And that’s what he’s going to do in a fiscally responsible way.’

“What I can speak to is what the president has done over the last two years — is we sa[w] the deficit go down $1 trillion. He spent — he signed another piece of legislation where the deficit is going to go down another $1 trillion. That is the president’s focus, that is why we believe Bidenomics is so important.”

The Treasury Department’s data show the deficit at about $1.61 trillion as of July— meaning it’s already the highest ever when excluding 2020 and 2021.

The deficit grew during each of former President Donald Trump’s first three years in office before soaring from nearly $1 trillion to a record $3.1 trillion in fiscal 2020 as the government covered much of the nation’s payroll during the early phase of the pandemic.

The deficit nudged down to $2.8 trillion in fiscal 2021, despite Democrats passing a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill with no Republican support in Congress, which critics say helped cause the worst inflation in four decades, peaking at an annual rate of 9.1% last June.

Harvard economist Jason Furman, a top Obama administration adviser, told the Washington Post that this year’s jump is comparable to “major crises.

“To see this in an economy with low unemployment is truly stunning. There’s never been anything like it,” Furman said. “A good and strong economy with no new emergency spending — and yet a deficit like this. The fact that it is so big in one year makes you think it must be some weird freakish thing going on.”

The national debt has increased by more than $5 trillion since Biden took office, from $27.75 trillion to about $32.8 trillion. Under Trump, it increased by almost $8 trillion — up from nearly $20 trillion.