“Crazy, Stupid” Federal Spending Proposals from Candidates of Both Parties

Thanks to the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, which has been described as “the worst budget deal in history,” the U.S. government will spend $57.9 trillion over the next 10 years, with $12.2 trillion of that spending requiring new borrowing that will add to the U.S. government’s bloated $22.7 trillion national debt.

Those already crazy numbers come from the Congressional Budget Office’s August 2019 estimate of the U.S. government’s budget outlook from 2020 through 2029. But if you’ve been paying attention to what the major contenders for the 2020 presidential election are proposing to spend, the numbers for unsustainable government spending will almost certainly be growing to “crazy, stupid” levels over the next 10 years.

Starting with Charles Fain Lehman and David Rutz’s tally of the major spending proposals for all the Democratic Party’s candidates through the end of July 2019, I’ve updated that analysis to include the major spending proposals that each of the surviving major candidates have issued in the months since. The resulting chart below shows just how “crazy, stupid” the numbers for future U.S. government spending are becoming.

2020 Major Presidential Candidates Proposed Spending, 2020-2029

2020 Major Presidential Candidates Proposed Spending, 2020-2029

Who would ever have guessed that the spending authorized by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, which I assume represents the amount of government spending that President Trump supports because he signed it into law, would become the sanest amount of government spending proposed by any of 2020’s major presidential candidates?

 

Craig Eyermann is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.
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