© David Burton 2021

     With the return to power of the Democrats in 2020, the liberal spendthrift element of the Democratic Party is once again pushing for the spending of trillions of dollars that would increase the already sky-high federal debt and threaten to bankrupt the United States!

     “If Joe Biden wanted to spend massively in response to a nearly unprecedented public health emergency, he was elected too late.
     “The conventional wisdom justifying Biden’s new FDR-sized ambitions is that the country is in crisis, and he has to meet the proverbial moment, which can only be done with 13-digit spending bills.
     “The truth is, though, that there is no crisis, and there is no moment. There’s only an excuse, an occasion, and a procedure.
     “The excuse is the supposed downtrodden state of the country such that only $6 trillion can save it from rack and ruin.
     “The occasion is very slender Democratic majorities in Congress that are willing to contemplate levels of spending that, not too long ago, only the likes of Bernie Sanders and AOC openly agitated for.
     “The procedure is reconciliation, the process that allows fiscal measures to pass the Senate with just 51 votes rather than the usual 60.
     “It is true that the nation was in a double-barreled public health and economic emergency for about a year, but Biden took office in January just when, thanks to the advent of the COVID-19 vaccines, the end was finally in sight.
     “Now {at the start of May 2021}, new cases have declined steeply from their peak . . .
     “Over 100 million Americans have been vaccinated. The problem no longer is producing and distributing enough vaccine for the public but finding enough people who want to get it.
     “Whereas FDR confronted a 25% unemployment rate during the Great Depression, Joe Biden inherited an economy on the verge of takeoff.
     “GDP grew by 1.6% in the first quarter {of 2021}, or at a 6.4% annual rate. Some projections have GDP this year growing at the fastest clip since 1951. Consumer spending is expected to be the highest on record.
     “Biden strained, and mostly failed, in his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill to find priorities directly related to the disease and to relief to spend money on. It’ll be even harder in a roaring economy, with the virus on the wane.
     “So, it’s on to other alleged dire emergencies. But there is no infrastructure crisis. Contrary to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which has a vested interest in promoting more infrastructure spending, the condition of the nation’s highways and bridges has been getting better or stayed the same.
     “In his speech to the joint session of Congress {at the end of April 2021}, Biden correctly stated we are in a competition with China, then declared the way to prevail is to spend on every single one of his domestic priorities, as if Beijing’s threat to Taiwan can be deterred by spending another $80 billion on Amtrak and $174 billion on electric cars and charging stations.
     “No, none of this makes any sense. The real justification for the Biden spending spree is that Democrats are in a mood to do as much to transform the country as possible while their tenuous unified control of Washington lasts. [Emphasis mine]
     “The spending isn’t responsive to any groundswell in the country, it isn’t in keeping with the way Joe Biden campaigned in 2016, it isn’t being forced on us by events, and it isn’t carefully modulated or thought through.
     “The best case is that conditions in America, rather than being dire, are so propitious that these levels of spending can be absorbed without anything going wrong. But presidents are often defined by genuine, unexpected crises. The worry has to be that Biden will have spent a huge amount of cash and political capital before he even learns what real crisis he’ll have to confront. (Ref. 1)

     Today, the U.S. national debt is closer to $123 trillion, more than four times the $28 trillion that the Treasury Department is reporting! Chicago-based Truth in Accounting (TIA) has reported this in its new annual analysis of the nation’s finances.
     The federal government has $5.95 trillion in assets and $129.06 trillion worth of bills resulting in a $123.11 trillion shortfall, or a debt burden of $796,000 per U.S. household. Because of this massive amount of debt and repeatedly poor financial decisions made by lawmakers, TIA gave the U.S. government an “F” grade for its financial condition.
     The analysis, Financial State of the Union 2021 was based on the latest available audited Financial Report of the U.S. Government for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2020. According to the report and assuming that current laws and policies don’t change, the increase in the federal debt will grow faster than the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
     TIA found that the federal government’s overall financial condition worsened by $9.84 trillion in 2020, resulting from stimulus funding and costs imposed on state and local governments by lockdowns.
     The official Treasury Department figure of $28 trillion doesn’t account for the short- and long-term economic costs of state shutdowns in 2020 or those that are still ongoing in 2021. It also doesn’t include the amount the government owes in unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits. TIA’s total federal debt calculation includes $55.12 trillion in unfunded Medicare benefits and $41.20 trillion in unfunded Social Security benefits.
     After Medicare and Social Security, the next greatest debts the government owes are publicly held debt ($21 trillion), military and civilian retirement benefits ($9.4 trillion) and other liabilities ($2.25 trillion). To attack the federal debt, the federal government resorts to printing and borrowing more money or raising taxes instead of cutting spending.[2]

     The national debt and the uncontrolled spending being pushed by President Biden and liberal Democrats in Congress have raised concerns even among the more moderate members of the Democratic Party. West Virginia Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, is one such politician. Manchin, in late April 2021, said he was “very uncomfortable” with President Biden’s proposed $6 trillion trio of mammoth early-term spending bills, signaling trouble for the two packages still pending in Congress.
     Biden’s proposed spending splurge includes the $1.8 trillion “American Families Plan”, the $2.3 trillion “American Jobs Plan” and the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” – a grand total of $6.0 trillion. Manchin rightly said he was broadly concerned about adding to the national debt.
     Both of President Biden’s pending infrastructure plan and the “families” plan would be funded with tax hikes on businesses, wealthier people and investors, which Republicans say would slow economic growth.
     Manchin isn’t the only stumbling block for Democrats. In the House, where Democrats hold a mere six-seat majority, a trio of Democrats - Reps. Tom Suozzi of New York and Josh Gottheimer and Bill Pascrell of New Jersey - vowed to oppose the “families” plan if it doesn’t contain a repeal of the 2017 SALT deduction cap, which essentially raised taxes in higher-tax jurisdictions like New York and New Jersey by capping at $10,000 the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted before paying federal taxes. “I want to be very clear as far as me personally: no SALT, no deal,” Suozzi said. The White House has said that if the SALT cap repeal is included in the final package, the change’s estimated $90 billion annual cost would have to be offset with new revenue.[3] But, as far as the free-spending Liberal Democrats are concerned, paying off America’s debt is of secondary importance compared to the opportunity to spend more of the taxpayer’s money. After all, the freebies that would be given away with the massive increase in spending would mean more Democratic votes from the recipients of their largesse.
     Joining the stampede to spend more money, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts released a plan during the last week of April 2021 for “affordable” child care in the U.S. Warren, alongside Democratic Representative Mondaire Jones of New York, reintroduced a $700 billion Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act to ensure families making up to twice the federal poverty line would be guaranteed free access to child care. . . Warren first proposed the plan in 2019, ahead of her presidential campaign.
     Warren and Jones proposed that their plan be paid for by Warren's wealth tax.
     The plan also calls for mental and physical health and dental care for children who need it, along with increased pay for childcare workers. The same week, House Democrats introduced a bill to provide a permanent child tax credit . . . At the same time, it was reported that President Biden will extend the existing child tax credit through 2025 at a cost of $400 billion. The upcoming second part of Biden's two-part infrastructure plan will be largely focused on funding childcare and education initiatives to directly help families with another giveaway - free community college.[4]

     On Thursday, 29 April 2021, Joe Biden gave his first address to the American people in an appearance before a joint session of Congress and, as expected, used his time in the limelight to push for trillions of dollars in new spending on things like infrastructure. But despite Biden’s spendathon, Democratic-Marxists, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) think he should spend hundreds of billions of dollars more on what they are calling the “Green New Deal For Public Housing Act.”
     Biden pushed his $1.8 trillion plan to boost programs for families, students and children (American Families Plan), and he pushed his $2.3 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan (American Jobs Plan). Class warfare and pro-union hype aside, Biden’s infrastructure proposal spends a lot of money on several far-left agenda items while spending very little on actual infrastructure. And the icing on the cake? Biden promised to pay for this over a 15-year period by raising taxes on corporations, which eventually means higher prices for consumers, lost jobs, and business closures.
     Biden’s proposal should send tingles up the spines of every Democratic Socialist, Marxist, and Communist in Washington. But Sanders and AOC apparently don’t think that he’s earmarked enough money for the “home infrastructure” portion of his proposal because it doesn’t do enough to address so-called climate change.
     To address Biden’s apparent oversight of their far-left priorities, Bernie Sanders and AOC introduced the “Green New Deal for Public Housing Act” last week to provide $172 billion or more to retrofit existing public housing - a bill originally introduced by Sanders in 2019 and co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). As you might expect, Bernie Sanders and AOC are being embraced by far-left special-interest groups who consider the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act a first step to greater things.
     This kind of optimism isn’t in vain because the Sanders/AOC proposal is considered a vital part of a new effort to pass the Green New Deal originally introduced in 2019 by AOC when she first arrived in Washington - a law that would essentially turn America into a command economy, owned and operated by the government.
     The day after AOC and Bernie Sanders made their proposal, AOC was joined by Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) - her partner in crime in 2019 - to revive the Green New Deal. Speaking to the press, Markey stated that while Biden’s American Jobs Act included the “DNA of the Green New Deal,” he promised to push Biden to expand the package.
     Biden’s spending spree on so-called infrastructure is bad enough on its own, but Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez want to make it still worse by spending hundreds of billions of dollars more on the afore-mentioned “Green New Deal For Public Housing Act.”
     We all should hang on to our wallets, but by the time Biden, the Democrats, and other liberal spenders are through with things, we won’t have anything in it to protect.[5]

     According to the Liberal Democrats, their plan to spend, spend, spend will be great for America. Like all socialist promises, everyone will get something and no one will have to pay the bill.

     But, like all fairy tales, there is another side to the story. Eventually, the bill will come due. Unlike a Marxist world full of utopian promises, we live in a real world with potentially disastrous consequences. One possible result of President Joe Biden 's plan for a multi-trillion dollar spending spree is an overheated US economy that is already rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic and which could send a devastating inflation spiraling out of control.
     Biden has argued that his 3 initial major tax and spending proposals would boost the American economy. To these, he also added plans for a $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan and an American Families Plan worth $1.8 trillion at a time when the national debt stood at its highest level in 76 years.
     While the Biden Administration argued that its spending spree could boost the economy without negative side effects, economists - both liberal and conservative - were warning that was a gamble. Many were arguing that the already-surging economy was expected to expand so fast that it could ignite inflation. And some economists were warning that the price tag would be high if the Biden administration was wrong.
     One economics expert at Loyola Marymount University told the Washington Post: “The philosophy behind the Biden administration is everyone can have more. We can have the cake and eat it, too. There is no price to pay in terms of inflation, higher interest rates or slower growth. If they are wrong, the price tag will be pretty high.” [6]

     Is the spending spree of President Biden and the other Liberal Democrats practical? Eight trillion dollars. That’s how much President Joe Biden has proposed in new spending — in just the first 2˝ months since taking office. It’s an absurd figure, equal to more than a third of America’s entire yearly economic output.
     Politically, such a massive binge could transform the nation by empowering and enriching Democratic special interests, lock in permanent Democratic control in Washington and impose radical left-wing ideas upon the nation.
     At the start of May 2021, Biden was planning to spend $1.52 trillion in discretionary spending, followed $1.9 trillion for the American Rescue Plan, $2.3 trillion for Part I of his infrastructure plan and another $2 trillion or so expected for Part II of his infrastructure plan. That mind-blowing $7.7 trillion total doesn’t even count another $3 trillion or so in entitlement spending and $300 billion in debt-service costs. Add that up and you’re talking about spending that’s more than half the nation’s $21 trillion annual GDP output.
     Where would all this cash go? Mostly to Democratic allies and left-wing fantasies: unions and their members, Democratic states facing budget gaps, government bureaucrats, Green New Deal wish-lists and Democratic-friendly corporations.
     The plans also steer hundreds of billions toward clean-energy programs via subsidies to utilities, electric-car makers and Green New Deal white elephants. Think Solyndra - the solar-panel company that got $535 million in Obama-era funding and then went belly up.
     Every single push from this president and the Democrats who control both houses of Congress is a shove toward a total transformation - a massive expansion of government, union power, Democratic control and Green New Deal boondoggles. All to be financed via trillions in debt and redistributive new taxes to please far-left socialist-leaning progressives. If Biden & Co. get their way, say goodbye to America as we once knew it.[7]

     So what can be the consequences of all this spending by Democratic Liberals? Did someone say bankruptcy? Maybe the saddest part about our country’s lack of fiscal responsibility is that we are simply ignoring the problem. When the problem finally does become so obvious and so immense, our children - or theirs - will have to face up to the consequences.
     It would be one thing if America collectively decided we have to be honest about where we are as a country and we were in the middle of a charged debate about how to fix it. Instead, we are fighting about trivial things while pretty much everyone in the country, on all sides of the political spectrum, has decided our real problems are so bad that we may as well ignore them. Have you ever had a friend who’s had some horrible, embarrassing event in their life? The last thing you want to do is mention it. That’s America and our debt problem. It’s so bad that we don’t talk about it.
     It was a full 10 years ago that our national debt was so high and we were so focused on it that then-President Barack Obama was forced to set up a national commission to deal with it. When that commission was formed, America was about $13 trillion in debt. Today, we owe more than double that, more than $26 trillion! On top of that $26 trillion, President Biden and his Liberal Democratic cohorts are working hard to add still more trillions of debt.
     Those numbers are so big that nobody understands them. To put it in perspective, our entire economic output in 2020 was $21 trillion. If America could magically not spend a dime - nobody bought anything, including food or other staples - and we put it all toward paying off our federal debt for an entire year, we still wouldn’t pay it off. In more personal terms, our federal debt now amounts to more than $81,000 for every single person in the country, or over $227,000 for the average household in America.
     If the problem is twice as bad as it was 10 years ago, why don’t we even discuss it anymore? It’s as if we are so close to the iceberg that it’s too late to avoid it. Let’s just rearrange the deck chairs, keep the band playing and enjoy things while we can. It’s all going to be our kids’ problem, not ours.
     Our national desire to wish our problems away is so severe that we are deluding ourselves with the belief - really, the irrational hope - that deficits and debt don’t really matter for a sovereign country that can print its own currency. Need more money? You just keep printing more. It’s like magic. The bill never comes due. That’s B.S.!
     This irrational attitude simply ignores or explains away the downside to the constant printing of money and issuance of debt, including our creditors losing faith and no longer buying our bonds, and hyperinflation. Despite these huge drawbacks, it’s amazing that we continue ignoring this imminent debt disaster.
     What will happen in a debt crisis; why are we ignoring this obvious and impending catastrophe; and what should we do about it?
     At some point, as we continue to borrow money, the interest we pay on our debt will be so high we will not be able to afford the rest of our budget. The solution will be to borrow more. As the borrowing binge grows, those buying our bonds will grow worried and demand a higher return. This, in turn, will create a vicious debt cycle, which has already happened in many countries around the world. The result is catastrophic reductions in spending and increases in taxes to try to satisfy creditors to keep the money flowing.
     The only reason we haven’t seen it yet in America is we are such an economically powerful country that our creditors have not yet lost faith in our ability to pay it off. If that day comes - and unless we make changes, it eventually will - the crisis is going to worsen and devastate all Americans.
     We are ignoring our looming debt crisis because it’s not a winner politically. In the past, both political parties have contributed to creating the problem. Today, Liberal Democrats are drastically exacerbating the problem.
     This period may well be looked upon by historians as the saddest time in our history: America’s citizens behaving so selfishly and with such short-term interests that they sold their children’s futures away with barely any debate.[8]

     Liberal Democratic politicians have urged President Biden to take steps that would further increase the already overwhelming federal debt. In February 2021, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley urged President Biden to use his executive authority to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt for federal student loan borrowers. More than four dozen Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate joined the resolution.
     Such sweeping executive action would almost certainly face a legal challenge, and it’s unclear whether it could survive. Critics have argued that using such power exceeds the president’s authority granted by Congress. Canceling student loan debt would also add to the nation’s already-ballooning national deficit, which totaled a record $3.1 trillion for the 2020 fiscal year.[9]

     Even before he was elected president, Joe Biden was recognized by some as the free-spending Democratic Liberal that he has turned out to be. Just prior to the 2020 election, the following appeared in the Libertarian publication reason:

     " ‘John Kerry ran on [spending] $2 trillion [extra] over 10 years. Barack Obama ran on $1 trillion, Hillary on $2 trillion. Biden? $11 trillion,’ . . . the president-elect also stumped for $3.6 trillion in new taxes over the coming decade, which would be the single-largest increase since World War II.
     “. . .’ It used to be a trillion-dollar policy would shock people, and now a trillion-dollar policy gets laughed at for being insufficient.’
     “Joe Biden's ambitious fiscal policy and his promises to beef up labor and environmental regulations are the reasons why The Washington Post called his platform ‘more liberal than that of every past Democratic nominee.’ . . . In fiscal 2020, the federal government spent $6.6 trillion and posted a $3.1 trillion deficit, potentially setting staggeringly high new baselines for both.
     “. . . there will still be plenty of new spending over the next four years. ‘In the short term, you're going to get more pandemic aid, more recession aid,’ . . . ‘Not nearly the $3 trillion the Democrats want, but maybe another $1 trillion. . . Bernie Sanders ran on $97 trillion, Elizabeth Warren ran on $45 trillion. All of a sudden, Biden's a moderate.’ “ (Ref. 10) The pre-election perception of Joe Biden is proving to be extremely insightful.

     As part of the Democratic agenda to spend, spend and spend while they are in power, Joe Biden wants to spend more than $225 billion on child care for infants and toddlers, and $200 billion for free, universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds. This is being hailed as a social revolution that will finally bring the United States in line with other advanced democracies. In reality, it’s a program that shows a pronounced class bias. And since it is heedless of the experience of other such mass programs in the U.S. and around the world, the Biden approach is also likely to fail to achieve its goals.
     It’s just not true, as the Biden program assumes, that parents of young children are eager to shuttle them off to industrialized day care or pre-K programs. As shown in a recent survey, Biden and the Democrats want to use taxpayer dollars to create an arrangement that most parents would rather avoid. Also, the programs that have produced the most remarkable positive outcomes over the years tend to be small, expensive and very difficult to replicate. With respect to massive spending programs, there’s the experience of the Quebec Family Policy. The Canada province developed a crash program in the late 1990s that rapidly expanded child care with generally deleterious effects. Researchers found increased behavioral, social and health problems for the kids, and interestingly, worse outcomes for parents, too. As for pre-K, the largest study of Head Start, the federal program for low-income children, found that any early benefits faded by the third grade.
     But, in a desperate rush to spend another $4 trillion, Joe Biden wants his New Deal for kids — whether it’s good for them or not.[11]

     Any excuse will do to justify President Biden’s proposed spending spree. In his April address to Congress, President Biden used some variant of “compete” a dozen times. “We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century,” Biden said. “We’re at a great inflection point in history.” Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden said, is “deadly earnest about becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world. He and others, autocrats, think that democracy can’t compete in the 21st century with autocracies because it takes too long to get consensus.”
     To counter the threat from China, Biden insisted that the U.S. needed to spend trillions on education and social welfare. Biden even quoted his wife, first lady Jill Biden who had said: “Joe, any country that out-educates us is going to outcompete us.”
     Economic competition is one of the oldest and most bipartisan cliches in American politics. And while it’s not entirely nonsense, it is mostly nonsense.
     China is certainly an international competitor - militarily, diplomatically and geo-strategically. But that fact lends no heft to the case for (or against) subsidized day care. It does make the case for increased military spending or more foreign aid, but those expenditures are less popular. Which just shows that competitiveness really isn’t the issue.
     Democrats want more generous entitlements, increased education spending and jobs programs. Claiming that these changes would make America more competitive with China makes this agenda sound tougher, more serious and more urgent.
     The problem is that competitiveness, at least in the way it’s usually invoked, is a mirage. Given all the China rhetoric, you’d think we were neck-and-neck with them. Well, the United States ranks 13th in per-capita GDP. But all the nations beating us have fewer than 10 million inhabitants. We’re larger than all of them combined. Meanwhile China ranks 79th — behind Botswana, Bulgaria and Belarus.[12] So, in reality, all this talk about needing to spend more money in order to compete against China is just another Democratic smoke screen – a smoke screen to justify their need to spend and spend. America, beware the siren call!

     The people’s opportunity to restore some sanity in Washington will be coming up in 2022 and again in 2024. Will thinking Americans use these opportunities to turn out the Liberal spendthrifts who are threatening to bankrupt this country and replace them with fiscal conservatives?

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References:

1. 1Biden isn’t meeting a moment, he’s just spending $$, Rich Lowry, Boston Herald: Page, 5 May 2021.
2. Report: U.S. National Debt Closer to $123 Trillion, Nearly $796,000 Per Household, Bethany Blankley,
   The Tennessee Star, 26 April 2021.
3. Joe Manchin is ‘very uncomfortable’ with Biden’s proposed $6T spending spree, Steven Nelson, New York Post, 28 April 2021.
4. Elizabeth Warren brings back her $700 billion universal childcare plan and wants the wealthy to pay for it,
   Ayelet Sheffey, Insider, 27 April 2021.
5. Bernie Sanders and AOC propose ‘Green New Deal’ for public housing, David Leach,
   The Strident Conservative, 29 April 2021.
6. COULD BIDEN OVERHEAT THE ECONOMY AND SEND INFLATION SOARING? ,
   Katelyn Catralle and Chris Jewers, Daily Mail, 30 April 2021.
7. The $8 trillion (and growing) Biden wants to spend on changing America forever, New York Post, 17 April 2021.
8. Time to Start Talking About America’s Coming Bankruptcy, Neil Patel, The Daily Signal, 5 March 2021.
9. Spend-Hungry Democrats Urge Biden To Bankrupt America, Brooke Singman, Patriotic Times,
   Accessed 4 May 2021.
10. Joe Biden's $11 Trillion Plan To Bankrupt America, reason, 9 November 2020.
11. Biden’s child care policy an expensive folly, Rich Lowry, Boston Herald: Page 14, 13 May 2021.
12. For president & other pols, ‘competition’ is a marketing tool, Jonah Goldberg, Boston Herald: Page 15,
    13 May 2021.