Assessing the two major presidential nominees’ economic agendas.
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump head into this week’s first presidential debate with polls showing a virtual dead heat. The election is likely to turn on economic issues, with voters expressing serious concerns over persistent inflation, rising interest rates, and budget deficits rising to nearly $2 trillion. Moreover, whoever is president next year will inherit far-reaching economic questions: whether to extend the expiring discretionary spending caps, 2021 infrastructure law, and the 2017 tax cuts; how to handle another debt limit fight; and what to do about Social Security’s trust fund standing less than a decade away from insolvency and an automatic 21 percent benefit cut.
Unfortunately, neither Biden nor Trump is offering plausible, pro-growth, or realistic solutions on any of these issues. And in fact, Trump has suggested economic policies that—if he is serious about implementing them—would be extraordinarily damaging to the economy.
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Brian M. Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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