During the Obama years, “unexpectedly” appeared in so many headlines that it became a punchline — an expression of the journalistic class’s childlike wonderment in the world around them and their disappointment over their encounters with unmet expectations.
Economists were “baffled” by the “unexpected” increase in the unemployment rate in 2011. “The nation’s manufacturing output unexpectedly shrank to its lowest level in four years,” the Washington Post marveled in 2013. When U.S. industrial productivity collapsed in 2014, it did so “unexpectedly.” “Jobless claims jump unexpectedly to 10-month high,” read one 2015 headline.
This pattern of astonishment became a joke because conservatives were never as stupefied by the news as its chroniclers. The Obama administration’s efforts to catalyze an economic recovery ensured it would be sluggish, relying as it did on inefficient stimulus spending, counterproductive regulations of labor and financial markets, and marginal tax increases to cover existing federal obligations and a handful of pricey new obligations. The outcomes these policies produced were not “unexpected” to students of sound fiscal policy.
It seems that old habits die hard. Once again, reporters are back to being theatrically bewildered by events that were not only foreseeable but forecasted.
“Federal deficit unexpectedly set to double this year,” read an Axios headline on Thursday. “The federal deficit is expected to nearly double this year, from about $1 trillion last year to $2 trillion for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30,” the report observed. “There’s no precedent for deficits this large, as a share of the economy — outside war, deep recession or pandemic.”
Axios cites Washington Post journalist Jeff Stein’s reporting, who joins the “Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget” in assigning the blame for this unfortunate circumstance to rising interest rates on America’s rapidly ballooning debt obligations and declining tax revenue. “A strong economy usually reduces the deficit,” Stein wrote. “Not this time.”
Who could have seen it coming? Well, the Congressional Budget Office, for one, in its 2022 long-term budget outlook:
[I]n CBO’s projections, federal deficits over the 2022–2052 period average 7.3 percent of GDP (more than double the average over the past half-century) and generally grow each year, reaching 11.1 percent of GDP in 2052. That projected growth in total deficits is largely driven by increases in interest costs.
So, too, did the few media outlets that scolded Joe Biden for taking credit for reducing the federal deficit in 2022 only because he tried and failed to seek a new injection of taxpayer-funded stimulus to address the effects of a pandemic that was already, at the time, behind us. “The U.S. deficit will shrink to $1 trillion this year, before beginning to soar in 2024,” Politico reported in May 2022. The Wall Street Journal’s reporting confirmed that expectation. “Economists widely agree the deficit is set to widen in most years through 2032 due to rising spending on entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare and interest costs on the debt,” read an October 2022 dispatch. “Higher rates could add an additional $1 trillion to what the federal government spends on interest payments this decade, according to Peterson Foundation estimates,” the New York Times reported that same month.
Perhaps the precise scale of the increase in the national deficit was unknowable, but the increase itself was hardly “unexpected.” That is, unless you’re committed to being easily shocked.