“It remains well within and under historic norms, and I think it needs to stay that way,” Ms. Yellen said of interest costs at a House hearing on Thursday. “That’s a metric that I am looking at to judge the sustainability of federal finances.”
Bringing growth forecasts back to Earth.
Administrations have long used overly rosy economic growth projections as a way to make their fiscal promises appear feasible. During the Trump administration, the White House envisioned years of sustained growth at 3 percent or beyond, making it possible for its $1.5 trillion tax cuts to pay for themselves and to provide a balanced budget.
Biden’s Agenda ›
Politics Updates
- Biden is said to be planning to nominate Burns and Garcetti for ambassadorships.
- A filibuster fight is looming in the Senate.
- The mother of a Capitol Police officer who died lobbies G.O.P. to drop their opposition to an inquiry.
The Biden White House avoids such gimmicks in its budget. It assumes that the economy will rebound to grow 5.2 percent this year and 4.3 percent in 2022 before settling to grow 1.8 percent to 2 percent for the rest of the decade. Those rates are in line with what the Congressional Budget Office has forecast.
The projections could open up the Biden administration to criticism that its policies are setting the United States up for years of sluggish growth — the same type of criticism that the Obama administration faced from Republicans. However, some economists argued on Thursday that gross domestic product was not the best gauge of the economy’s health.
“Most importantly, a lot of the benefits of the President’s policies are improving inclusion, opportunity, climate,” Jason Furman, a Harvard professor and the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration, wrote on Twitter. “So even if they didn’t add anything to growth they would still likely be an improvement.”
No inflation worries here.
The biggest critique of the Biden economic agenda is whether the economy is overheating. Prices of nearly everything have been picking up in recent months, but the White House insists this is the “transitory” result of an economy that is starting to reopen. It blames logistical issues such as shortages and supply chain bottlenecks rather than more fundamental matters for signs of inflation.
The Biden budget largely sticks to this script. It projects that the Consumer Price Index will rise to 2.1 percent this year, reach 2.2 percent in 2023 and then settle in at 2.3 percent annually from 2025 through 2031.