During Thursday night’s debate, President Joe Biden defended his record with a raspy voice and stuttering speech, which made Democrats worry about his candidacy.
Former President Donald Trump made fun of Biden and questioned his mental health. He also denied having sex with a porn star and made fun of his felony conviction for that crime.
Then they got into a fight about golf swings and handicaps.
“Let’s not act like kids,” Trump said as a parting shot at the president’s golf skills.
Biden replied, “You are a child.”
When pollster Frank Luntz asked people who weren’t sure what they would do, he said, “Now it’s getting dumb—Americans are struggling and the two presidential candidates are arguing about golf.”
MarketWatch spoke to people who watched the debate and said it was a fight, but it didn’t go into enough detail for regular Americans wondering how to solve their money problems.
Many Americans were still worried about their current and future financial situations as the match took place. Credit card debt has gone over $1 trillion, and the rate of early credit card delinquency is getting close to a level not seen since 2011.
Concerns have been raised about the coming shortfall in Social Security. There will be a big drop in benefits for people in 2035, when the trust funds will only be able to pay 83% of what they promised.
At the same time, big parts of the tax code are about to expire, and no one knows what will happen next or how the federal government will pay for new tax breaks.
According to Ida Rademacher, co-executive director of the Aspen Financial Security Program, the talk we had last night and the one we are having today is about politics. Rademacher told MarketWatch on Friday. “The people of the United States need to talk about their wallets.”
Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst at Bankrate, said, “There was very little useful information for people and families who have important questions and needs about their personal finances.”
“Something like a chess match is needed for these kinds of talks, but all we got was a cage match, which is bad for the American people,” he said.
Of course, the candidates did talk about some problems with their finances. CNN’s Jake Tapper asked the first question about inflation, food prices, and people who think they’re worse off under Biden than Trump. Biden said that the economy was in bad shape when he took office and that he has taken steps to keep prices down, but he also said, “There’s more to be done.”
In response, Trump said, falsely, that until the pandemic, he was in charge of “the greatest economy in the history of our country.” He said that the actions of his administration kept things from getting worse and that Biden’s policies are “killing our country” with inflation.
“There was nothing useful in that conversation.”
The debate happened at a time when consumer prices were still going up slowly, as shown most recently by data released Friday on the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation.
But Hamrick said that inflation rates are “really, in many ways, yesterday’s news.” “People are really hoping for some light or reason to hope when it comes to these problems with affordability.”
He also said, “That conversation was pointless.”
Later, Tapper asked Biden and Trump what they would do to lower the cost of child care, which is going up very quickly. Trump used the time to talk about Afghanistan and the U.S. border. Biden said that the U.S. was the most admired country in the world. He then quickly brought up the need for more child care centers and bigger tax credits for kids.
Experts in housing said that problems with the cost of housing and what Trump and Biden would do to fix them were also barely touched upon. This is despite the fact that home prices in the U.S. have reached all-time highs and young Americans saying that housing affordability is the most important issue to them in the November election.
Requests for comment from the Trump and Biden campaigns were not answered right away. A lot of money was given to both sides of the debate, according to their officials.
An April Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll found that voters in seven swing states thought that everyday prices, healthcare costs, and housing costs were the most important economic issues.
Few details about taxes, even though due dates are coming up
People ranked taxes about middle on that list. Even people who know a lot about taxes wanted more after the debate.
“It was easy to guess how the candidates would talk about taxes,” said John Gimigliano, a principal at the accounting firm KPMG.
It came down to Biden wanting to raise taxes on high-income families and Trump wanting to keep his tax cuts from 2017 and add more tariffs, Gimigliano said. “In the end, last night’s tax talk may have been most useful for setting the tone, if not the specifics, of the next tax fight,” he said.
“There were a few brief mentions of tax policy last night, but there wasn’t a long-term discussion of the candidates’ plans for the tax code, which is something that really needs to happen,” said Jonathan Traub, who heads Deloitte’s tax policy group in its Washington National Tax office.
A lot of Trump’s tax cuts will end at the end of 2025 and go back to how they were in 2017 if the White House and Congress can’t come to an agreement. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently said that a full extension would cause the deficit to grow by $4.6 trillion.
Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered most of the marginal tax rates for individuals and raised the standard deduction and the child tax credit. It gave small business owners and other pass-through businesses a tax break and doubled the estate tax exemption.
For people making less than $400,000 a year, Biden has promised not to raise taxes, and his administration has come up with other ideas aimed at households with more money.
Trump wants to extend the tax cuts indefinitely and cut them even more. One way he wants to do this is by not taxing workers’ tips.
“Several trillion dollars in higher taxes go into effect at the end of 2025 if our elected leaders don’t do anything next year,” Traub said. “This means that taxes will have to be at the top of everyone’s mind in 2025.” “Voters will be better informed this fall when they cast their ballots if candidates for the White House, Senate, and House start talking about it right away.”
