The 2024 Mid-Session Review
By Shalanda Young
Today, OMB released the 2024 Mid-Session Review (MSR). OMB is required by law to release an annual mid-year forecast that updates the President’s Budget estimates to account for technical and legislative developments.
This year’s MSR comes at a moment when there is clear evidence that the President’s economic plan—Bidenomics—is growing our economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. Since the President took office, the economy has created more than 13 million jobs—more jobs added in two and a half years than any president has ever created in a four-year term. The unemployment rate has remained below 4% for the longest stretch in more than 50 years. The share of working-age Americans with jobs is at the highest level in over two decades. While there is more work to do, annual inflation has fallen for 12 consecutive months to a two-year low. Real wages for the average worker—wages adjusted for inflation—are higher than pre-pandemic levels. And just this week, we saw that the economy grew at a 2.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter while inflation fell significantly. None of this is an accident—it’s Bidenomics in action.
Against this backdrop of economic progress, this year’s MSR once again makes clear that we can invest in the American people in a fiscally responsible way. This year’s deficit is projected to be over $1 trillion less than the year before the President took office. The President has signed into law about $1 trillion in additional deficit reduction over the next decade. And as the MSR illustrates, the President has put forward proposals to cut the deficit an additional $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years by cutting wasteful spending on special interests and making the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share. The President’s plan would achieve this deficit reduction while continuing to make smart investments in the American people, lower costs for hardworking families, bolster American manufacturing and clean energy, and protect and strengthen Medicare and Social Security.
Our task now is to continue building on the economic progress we’ve made—not go backwards. While Congressional Republicans are pushing the same failed trickle-down playbook of the past, the Biden-Harris Administration is going to continue working to grow our economy from the middle out and bottom up. As the President has said, we can do all of this while responsibly reducing the deficit and putting our country on a stronger fiscal course.
