By TOM SCHATZ, National Review
Since the beginning of the Reagan administration, the federal-budget submission to Congress has included a list of proposed budget cuts, terminations, consolidations, and savings, along with a management agenda. Every president since then thought it was important to provide this information, until President Joe Biden decided that there is not a single penny of the taxpayers’ money being misspent throughout the entire federal government.
The Biden-Harris administration’s $6 trillion budget for fiscal year (FY) 2002 is 37 percent greater than the $4.4 trillion spent in FY 2019, which was the last budget before the pandemic. Even with a $4 trillion tax increase, there is still a $1.84 trillion deficit, which is 86 percent greater than the $984 billion deficit in FY 2019. Deficits will exceed $1 trillion for each of the next ten years, pushing the national debt to more than $39 trillion from the current $28.4 trillion.
When he served with President Barack Obama, Mr. Biden was a key member of the administration’s efforts to promote its budget on Capitol Hill. He was involved in the negotiations over the Budget Control Act of 2011, which set spending caps and helped to somewhat restrain the growth of spending until it expired. President Obama tasked the then–vice president with leading his Campaign to Cut Waste, saying, “I know Joe’s the right man to lead it because nobody messes with Joe.”
Mr. Biden called himself “Sheriff Joe” for his work with the Recovery Board, which tracked expenditures under the $831 billion stimulus bill, along with the Government Accountability and Transparency Board, which was established to identify ways agencies could eliminate waste and improve performance. Mr. Biden said the transparency board would be looking at every dollar of government spending.
According to an April 19, 2019, Government Executive article about how then-candidate Joe Biden would approach managing the government as president, he had said the success of the Campaign to Cut Waste “would be measured by results, not rhetoric.” He said it would “restore trust in government” and do “more than just eliminating waste and fraud . . . by instilling a new culture of efficiency in each of our agencies, greater responsibility, responsiveness and accountability.”
