Nikki Haley, former United Nations ambassador, slammed President Joe Biden’s comments that members of the GOP are “fiscally demented” and called for the President to sign off on a $6 trillion spending package amid crushing inflation and an impending debt ceiling deadline.
“Biden’s signed off on more than $6 trillion in new spending — and pushed for trillions more, and he’s calling Republicans’ fiscally demented.’ Try again, Mr. President,” wrote the former governor of South Carolina on Twitter.
When Biden took office, the national debt was $27.7 trillion. It is currently around $31.4 trillion, an increase of $3.7 trillion in two years.
When speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event on Monday, President Biden blamed Republicans, calling them “fiscally demented” while praising Democrats’ achievements and claiming they are the more fiscally sensible party.
“They’re going to talk about big-spending Democrats again. Guess what? I reduced the deficit last year to $350 billion. This year, the federal deficit is down $1 trillion-plus. That’s a fact,” said the President.
“And there’s going to be hundreds of billions reduced over the next decade. But so what? These guys are fiscally demented, I think. They don’t quite get it,” continued Biden.
In May of 2022, Biden proposed a $6 trillion spending package to bankroll his wide-reaching economic agenda. The agenda included investments in infrastructure, transportation, and education.
Democrats have authorized trillions in spending on agenda items
Since the President has taken office, Democrats have authorized about $3.8 trillion in spending on their top items on the agenda. The most costly of Democrats’ key pieces of legislation was their first, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP).
The ARP was followed in 2021 by the infrastructure bill, which was supported by a small number of Republicans and all Democrats and cost $1.2 trillion in baseline and new spending.
President Biden passed a $280 billion piece of legislation in the summer of 2022 to challenge China, along with a $20 billion spending on a gun control bill.
Ultimately, the Inflation Reduction Act was passed. The legislation was a revamp of Build Back Better. Cost estimates range from $430 billion to $480 billion in tax credits combined with spending. The President signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in August 2022.
Under former President Trump, the national debt rose about $8 trillion over his term, with part of that hike being from the Covid-19 relief plan. After the former President took office, he quickly put a massive tax cut in place, which critics say increased the annual deficit further.
Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cautioned that the U.S. is on the path to reaching the debt ceiling, a limit to how much money can be borrowed by the federal government, by Thursday. The last time the ceiling was raised was in December 2021, when it was moved from $2.5 trillion to $31.4 trillion.
The Treasury Department has warned both Republicans and Democrats to reach a compromise. However, Republicans have said they would not support the call from Democrats to increase the debt ceiling unless concessions and significant cuts are made.
Yellen warned congressional leaders, harkening back to 2011 when the United States reached its debt limit, which created chaos in the stock market.
Under the Biden administration, in June 2022, inflation hit a 40-year-high of 9.1%, along with soaring gas prices.
In November, the President’s administration took credit for the reduction in the federal deficit, leaving out additional contributing factors that led to the decrease.
“The Biden-Harris Administration lowered the deficit with the single largest one-year reduction in American history,” tweeted the White House. Twitter users rapidly pointed out that regardless of the reduction, “the FY22 deficit is still the 4th largest in history and is 41% larger than FY19” and emphasized that high Covid-propelled deficits played a crucial role in the drop.
