If you listen hard enough, you just might hear the bombs dropping at Pearl Harbor and the
sounds of a nation mobilizing for war the next day. Congress was handing out contracts for war machinery and appropriating money by the bucket full to meet the emergency back then.
Or you might not hear anything at all now, save for the contemporary United States Treasury printing IOUs like those furious days in the early 1940’s. Last week, President Joe Biden and his administration released their budget proposals for 2022, leaving quite a lot of folks in utter shock by the enormity of what he asked for.
As far as I know, there’s no all-encompassing national emergency to confront, no enemy having declared war on us, no massive attacks in the works and no call for volunteers or plans for a national draft. Still, the socialists who run today’s federal government claim a multitude of “crises” to be met along with their standard “existential threats” to treat with big money. They’d never admit it, but there are a lot of Democrat constituents to pay off and welfare to be distributed to the party’s voter base as well.
Spend, spend, spend. It’s a disgrace.
“President Biden is set to propose a budget totaling $6 trillion... The proposal would contain major investments in infrastructure, education and health care … and bring federal spending levels to their highest sustained level since World War II.
“Under the plan… the federal government would spend $6 trillion in the 2022 fiscal year and spending would increase to $8.2 trillion by the year 2031. The plan demonstrates that Biden shows little interest in taming the deficit, which would remain above $1 trillion through the next decade despite an expected economic recovery. The deficit only exceeded that level in the four-year period following the Great Recession and again after the COVID-19 pandemic slammed the economy.
“Rather than find a path to a sustainable debt, the plan would increase the country’s debt burden to 117 percent of gross domestic product by the end of the decade, exceeding its World War II record in 2024.”
In fairness, the Republicans’ proposed budgets of recent times didn’t balance either, and both sides regularly project that economic growth would eventually scale back the red ink figures. But comparing big vs. bigger is a fruitless exercise. When paired with Biden’s growth depressing proposed tax hikes, this is one heck of an irresponsible spending spree without justification or explanation.
Is anyone surprised that good ol’ senile Joe is going all-out on his budget proposal? Answering my own question, there probably is a tiny micro-fraction of the 2020 American electorate who swallowed the media’s less-than-edible garbage about Biden being a “fiscal moderate” and a “unifier” who would bring back sanity and responsibility to government, a man who laughed off the notion he was a socialist and swore he wasn’t planning to expand government into heretofore impossible to contemplate levels.
Yes, those few percentage points worth of Americans -- the ones who likely made all the difference in Biden’s narrow swing state wins -- are tossing and turning in their beds right now, unable to sleep, feeling betrayed because they were gulled into trusting the near octogenarian’s lies. Senile Joe’s made a career of pulling the wool over decent people’s eyes, and he perfected the practice last year.
Commentators often compare politicians to poker players who bluff and raise the ante time and time again, like senile Joe’s doing now with the budget. But can you imagine playing Monopoly with Joe Biden -- or any Democrat for that matter? If, by roll of the dice, you landed on one of Joe’s government squares during a trip around the board, he’d no doubt announce a different price than the one printed on the card or surface of the game.
Based on what criteria, you ask?
Well, depending on your race, you might be eligible for some sort of federal subsidy for senile Joe’s hotels. As has become common knowledge by now, Biden and his party’s “rescue plan” is chock full of favoritism by skin color or national origin, which means if you’re a poor guy living in Appalachia who happens to be pale and descended from European ancestry, you’re either out of luck or need to get in the back of the line with other white bread Americans from South Africa and Zimbabwe, who intermingle with Russians, Latvians and Israelis. Whoever decided to apportion the federal goodies by race clearly isn’t familiar with history or constitutional law study. Discriminating -- or reverse-discriminating -- is a no-no now. No matter!
Then, due to the recent rapid escalation in inflation, the “rent” might have gone up without prior notification (or prices are going up so fast we can’t keep track of them). Since Joe is in charge of the folks who run the FED, they decided, during a restroom break, to print up a bunch of Monopoly currency and distribute it to their friends (without your knowledge, of course). Jacking up the charges is perfunctory! There’s so much cash floating around that it has to go somewhere, right?
Lastly, if senile Joe and his minions determine that you’re “rich” or have too large of an income, they could arbitrarily adjust the price based on the amount they believe you should be paying. Biden would have his own set of Monopoly “Community Chest” cards printed for your particular game, where he assesses your demographic characteristics, gender, race, sexual orientation, political party affiliation and willingness to give all for social justice and “climate change” -- and then put a number on your “fair share.”
If you protest and suggest that Joe ‘n crew aren’t playing by the rules of the game, they’ll just label you an insurrectionist and hand you a “Go directly to jail” card, which, with small print on the bottom indicating it’s effective immediately and cancels any “Get out of jail free” passes you might’ve earned prior to it. Upon arriving at the federal penitentiary, you’re stripped of your clothing, forced to wear the orange jumpsuit of a convict and locked up in solitary confinement.
One doesn’t have to be an experienced Monopoly enthusiast to know Joe’s a big cheat, but then again, there aren’t any winners in this budget game. If history is a guide, Republicans will take the Democrats’ outlandish proposals and cut off a slice (instead of wholesale trashing the entire thing) and haggle over a smaller package that will still fund most of what Biden, Nancy Pelosi and “Chucky” Schumer wanted in the first place.
The multiple COVID “relief” packages demonstrated the concept last year. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell held out against funding for blue state governments (until Biden was elected and passed slush for them without Republican votes) but basically gave the okay for unemployment “bonuses” and generous “stimulus” checks to everyone.
Frankie-baby Sinatra crooned about “Pennies from Heaven” raining from the clouds, but where the government is concerned, it’s more like thousands and millions deposited directly into your bank account. There’s a tremendous labor shortage practically everywhere you look but the unemployment-plus-bonus checks are sure making a lot of slackers comfortable on the couch!
One need not go into specifics of Biden’s budget to know it won’t get passed in its initial form, but that’s little comfort to those who are sick to death of bloated government and stratospheric spending. We don’t even hear terms like “raising the debt ceiling” or “budget sequesters” or “cut, cap and balance” anymore. Republicans hold the line on raising taxes, but what else are they good for?
Whatever happened to the days when people spoke highly of limited government and holding economic regulation and rules to the lowest ebb to ensure fairness? Biden wants to spend like it’s WWII all over again, though this time there’s no overriding threat of that magnitude. The only thing to battle these days is stupidity. And there’s more than enough of it to go around.
Biden Budget
$6 trillion
national debt
federal budget
climate change
Americans for Limited Government
infrastructure
clean energy
education
child care
economic growth
GDP
pandemic
regulations
blue state bailouts
federal subsidies