BIDEN’S DANGEROUS DEFICIT. Just a few months ago, in February, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the federal budget deficit for 2024 would be $1.5 trillion. That is bad enough, but the CBO has revised its forecast: The 2024 deficit will now be $1.9 trillion. That is a 27% increase in the gap between federal government spending and revenues in a very short period of time. “Since [February], CBO has increased its projection of outlays in 2024 by $363 billion and decreased its estimate of revenues by $45 billion,” CBO said in a new report.

What accounts for the change? The biggest single factor, according to CBO, is President Joe Biden‘s unilateral forgiveness of student loans. Biden couldn’t get Congress to do it, and he couldn’t get the courts to approve it, so now he is just doing it in big chunks on what he says is his executive authority alone and daring anyone to stop him. From CBO: “A $145 billion increase in projected outlays for student loans stems mostly from revisions that the administration made to the estimated subsidy costs of previously issued loans and from the administration’s proposed rule to reduce many borrowers’ balances on student loans.”

What else accounts for the skyrocketing deficit? According to CBO, another $60 billion in previously unexpected expenses is Biden’s aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, passed recently by Congress. Higher Medicaid costs, expanded through Obamacare, also contributed, as did the cost of bailing out some banks that failed in 2023.

The point is a large part of the steep increase in the federal deficit this year is attributable to Biden and Biden alone, in the form of his arguably unconstitutional action to forgive as many student loans as he can get away with. And it’s more than just arguably unconstitutional. It’s bad policy, rewarding those who took out big student loans and didn’t pay them off, and not rewarding those who diligently paid their loans, and also not rewarding the majority of people who didn’t go, or perhaps couldn’t afford to go, to college at all.

Plus, along with Biden’s billions in electric vehicle subsidies, the student loan giveaway is just bad politics. Note this from a New York magazine piece about Democrats who want Biden to highlight more centrist accomplishments: “The very worst thing Joe Biden could do if he hopes to defeat Donald Trump is forgive student loans for the millions. The second-worst thing is talk up the tax credit for electric vehicles his administration finalized earlier this year.”

The article cited research by Blueprint, a new Democratic data firm. “The EV tax credit and college-debt relief are both losers, according to Blueprint’s data, because they are both coded as preoccupations of the elite,” the story says. Biden, “middle-class Joe,” would be better off highlighting things like dealing with inflation, taxing the rich, efforts to bring down the cost of prescription drugs, strengthening border security, and more, according to Blueprint.

Of course, there are problems with some of those options. Biden’s own policies have contributed to the inflation that has been so devastating to families in the last three years. And Biden is personally responsible — himself, 100% — for the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. And whenever Biden and his party talk about “taxing the rich,” the middle class rightly fears that any new burden will work its way down to them. 

But there is no doubt that with the student loan actions, Biden has increased the deficit for a policy that appeals disproportionately to the progressive wing of his party. It seems likely former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies will have a lot to say about that in the fall campaign.