deficit financing

"If we take something like a cut-off of $100,000 a year in income, the minimum cost would be about $300bn, which would absorb all of the tariff revenue that's been taken in so far and would require some deficit financing," says Erica York, vice-president of tax policy at the non-partisan Tax Foundation.

It said the fund would extend to areas such as oil and metals buy-back financing, commodity export revenue stabilisation and tourism revenue deficit financing.

The U.S. government borrowed more than $1 trillion, mostly from the Chinese — via deficit financing — to fund the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

Mayra MacGuiness, president of the Committee for a Responsible Budget, said in a statement that “the strong economic growth projections from CBO show that it is time to pivot away from further deficit financing and towards paying for things and, ultimately, decreasing the national debt from its current path.”

Padilla also made a case that the administration could consider not paying for parts of the infrastructure and jobs plan — echoing the view of some other Democrats — although other attendees and people briefed on the meeting said Biden didn’t appear too keen on deficit financing.