April 22, 2021
In an article that ran under the headline “Biden’s mammoth education agenda would expand the federal role from cradle to college,” the Washington Post spewed a whole set of budget numbers with literally no context whatsoever, not even giving the number of years over which the money would be spent. For example, the piece told readers about a $200 billion pre-K plan and a proposal for $225 billion for child care without telling readers the time period for this spending.
Presumably, this is a 10-year funding stream, which means the pre-K spending comes to $20 billion a year, while the child care spending would be $22.5 billion a year. The Congressional Budget Office projects that GDP will average $27.9 trillion over the next decade, which means that the additional spending on pre-K would come to just over 0.07 percent of GDP, while the proposal for child care would come to a bit more than 0.08 percent of GDP. To use another base of comparison, these proposed increases in spending are each equal to less than 3.0 percent of projected military spending.
The piece also includes a chart with the heading “Biden’s proposed increase in education spending is enormous,” which shows Biden’s requested increase in discretionary spending by the Education Department of 41 percent. As the chart shows, this follows cuts in the Trump years. If we compare Biden’s 2022 proposal to spending in 2016, the last full year President Obama was in office, the increase is 50.5 percent, in a period in which nominal GDP grew 23.1 percent.
If we compare Biden’s proposed spending to 2011 spending, before the Republican Congress forced austerity on President Obama, the 2022 figure would be 50.4 percent higher. The economy is projected to be 48.5 percent larger in 2022 than it was in 2011, which means that Biden’s “enormous” increase in education spending would essentially be raising spending measured as a share of GDP back to its 2011 level.
This context does not minimize the importance of Biden’s proposals, which will likely have a substantial impact on educational outcomes, especially for children from low and moderate-income families. The additional support for child care will also make it far easier for parents of young children to balance work and family obligations. However, it is irresponsible to imply that these proposals involve some extraordinary commitment of resources. They do not.
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