The continuing credibility crisis of federal fiscal policy

Slogging through the 493 pages of the federal government’s November 4th, 2025, budget reveals the pre-release hype about transformational change to have been just that: hype. Start with the bloated page count. Like its predecessors, the budget buries the key numbers in hundreds of pages of repetition, reannouncements, and condescending political messaging. And the numbers themselves—the projections of revenue and expense, deficit and debt (on page 249!)—suggest that this budget is scarcely more credible than its predecessors were.

We still do not have the federal public accounts for the 2024-25 fiscal year, even though it ended more than seven months ago—another sign that the government does not take stewardship of public funds seriously. In their absence, a crucial number was the total for federal spending the budget showed for 2024-25. That number has a troubling history. The first projections for 2024-25 were in the 2019 Fall Economic Statement, which put it at $421 billion. The budget now pegs 2024-25 spending at $547 billion—more than $126 billion higher in just six years.

Even if that number accurately prefigures what the public accounts will show—and the delay in their release raises suspicions on that score—the government’s spending estimates have been leaping more than $20 billion every year. And notwithstanding pre-release talk of restraint and even austerity, comparing the budget’s projections for 2025-26 and beyond with its earlier budgets and fall statements reveals that the spending projections have risen yet again. Nothing has changed.

If the spending projections are not serious, the fiscal plan is not serious. The 2024 fall statement showed the deficit for 2025-26 at $42 billion. Now the budget says it will be $78 billion. Past fiscal projections claimed the ratio of debt to GDP would fall. The budget now shows it rising. We have no more reason to believe the federal government’s latest plan than we had to believe the earlier ones. The government’s fiscal credibility crisis continues.