Indiana Senator Doubts Biden’s 2024 Revenue Projection

President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal assumes government income to be 19.6 percent. Sen. Mike Braun (R.Ind.), disagrees. The administration found it difficult to believe, stating that the country has never produced more than 17.5% over 50 years. “being dishonest with the American public.”

Shalanda D.. Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget raised the income projection when she testified before the Senate Committee on the Budget on the 15th of March.

Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Chairman of the Committee had stated that the nation could only have a balanced budget when tax revenue was 19-20 percent of GDP.

Young was then asked to give him the president’s revenue projections for the 2024 budget proposal.

“On average, the President’s policies would bring in about 19.6 percent [in tax revenue] as a percentage of GDP. And that’s right in line with where tax revenue was under President [Bill] Clinton,” Young said this in reference to the last administration which achieved a balanced Budget.

Shalanda Young, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, answers questions at a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee in Washington on June 8, 2021. (Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)

“You also saw economic growth. And frankly, the investments we make here today are about growing the economy. We want more people in the workforce,” Young spoke of funds allocated to improve access to childcare.

Braun was shocked by the projected income percentage.

“Good luck with it because [the country has] never generated more than 17.5 percent in tax revenues as a percentage of our GDP over 50 years. Therefore, I think you’re being dishonest with the American public,” Baun said.

The senator traced the country’s past “migration into heavy debt” Over the past two decades, citing statistics that he called “astounding.”

The national debt stood at $5 trillion, and it grew to $18 trillion in 2018, partly due to the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. “We’ve now institutionalized trillion-dollar deficits annually,” Braun said.

“In a little over four years, we’ve gone from $18 trillion to $31 trillion in debt. And then a “Blueprint for Success” in this country puts us $51 trillion in debt by 2033. I don’t know how that can be sold to the American public as a sustainable, healthy business plan,” Braun said.

Addressing Young, Braun said, “You’re assuming all of a sudden we can raise 19 to 20 percent [of GDP] in revenues when historically, over 50 years, it’s been 17.5 percent,” Braun said.

“For a few years back in the Clinton administration, we did raise close to that. But you’re assuming that we can do that going further.”

Braun says it is foolish to raise taxes or spend above historical norms.

“When [revenue as a percentage of GDP] is above historical levels, it always comes with the price of lower economic activity,” He said that government spending of between 24 and 25 percent of GDP was unsustainable.

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