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Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 19, 2024

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Stealthy Biden bombardiers waited until the sleepy news cycle afternoon just before Memorial Day weekend to drop the biggest pork distribution and debt casualty assault on the American economy since waves of Japanese Imperial aircraft devastated Pearl Harbor.

If Democrats get their way – spending will have reached a level not seen in a single year since World War II.

Taking Expansive Spending to New Heights

”How far will that $6 trillion lard layer of spending stretch?” you might ask.

Well, even if you didn’t, here are a few illustrations for perspective.

Considering that a U.S. dollar bill is 6.4 inches long, 2.61 inches wide, and .0043 inches thick, then six trillion of them would cover 23,952 square miles … about the land surface area of West Virginia.

A column of six trillion stacked one-dollar bills would reach about 408,000 miles into space, or more than 1,500 times higher than the International Space Station.

If you are a really big spender, at the rate of $40 per second around the clock, it would take 4,755 years to go broke.

We can be assured that it won’t take the U.S. government nearly that long.

Cradle-to-Grave Debt for Our Kids

Democrat-proposed entitlements for federal nanny state child care, paid family leave, free community college … and much more, bring new meaning to cradle-to-grave coverage. Children in cradles today will be stuck with paying off parents’ debts throughout their lives.

These transfer payments have already risen from 27.7% of federal spending in1964 when LBJ launched his Great Society, to 70% in 2019. That rise will accelerate under current plans.

Whereas only two years ago, in 2019, federal debt held by the public as a share of GDP was 79.2%. In 2021 it is expected to reach 109%, higher than it was after World War II.

If Biden’s budget is approved, it would climb to 117% by 2031, and as entitlements grow, so will debt.

Nearly $1.5 trillion (23% of that proposed huge new $6 trillion spending increase) would go to the Department of Health and Human Services. Bear in mind that these are mandatory programs that are essentially ”forever” in that they don’t require annual congressional appropriations.

Federal entitlement spending already provides more than 90% of income for the bottom 20% of income-earning households, while the labor force participation rate among work-age households has collapsed to 36% from 68% since that War on Poverty began.

Recent experience with poorly conceived COVID relief unemployment compensation has made not working a viable — or even a preferred — option for many over employment. This trend, if continued, represents a big break from the idea that the best healthcare, housing, transportation, nutrition, and child care program was a job.

Grossly Inflating the Benefits

Inflation results with too much money chasing too few goods. This being the case, the end of pandemic shutdowns is releasing a floodgate of pent-up demand for products that are causing rising torrents of commodity prices.

The inflation rate, on an annual basis, soared to between 7.2% and 6.2% over the first four months of 2021. During April alone, the consumer price index rose a remarkable 4.2%, and 3% in the core measure that excludes food and energy.

Prices that month rose across the board, but especially for goods and services in lower demand during the lockdowns.

Surging commodities are feeding into consumer prices, with corn up 50% this year and 125% year-over-year.

Food prices overall climbed 0.4% since March, and 2.4% over the past 12 months. Fresh produce and meat prices rose even more.

Inflation is the inevitable result of government spending beyond its means and cheating on repayments. This theft has been facilitated by allowing the Treasury to cover debt by printing more money so that the dollar loses additional purchasing value every year.

Let’s remember that while inflationary spikes come and go, higher prices, like federal government entitlement transfer payments, rise forever.

And let’s also not forget who those climbing costs hurt the most. Such inflation is especially bad for the poor, the retired, and small businesses that lack the necessary resources to absorb the pain.

Hidden Taxing Realities

In reality, inflation is a powerful hidden tax, a way for the government to pay for goods and services without calling it taxation.

This trend is rapidly gaining momentum under the current administration.

We pay an increased Biden tax every time we buy skyrocketing gasoline, thanks to a combination of killing the Keystone XL pipeline and restricting exploration on federal lands and waters.

We will pay another tax in the form of a weakening dollar which will raise oil and natural gas prices on the world market where it is measured in U.S. currency … prices that go higher when the dollar declines.

President Joe Biden proposes to finance all this with some $3 trillion in tax increases, the largest tax-and-spend-spree as a share of the economy since 1968.

It is nonsense for Democrats to somehow imagine that their plans to raise death and corporate taxes, smother the private sector with regulations, kill the fossil fuel industry, and bloat regulatory agencies will end well for the American economy. It will not.

Even Biden’s budget assumes that interest payments on the debt will more than double to 11.2% of spending by the end of the decade.

This also assumes that the Federal Reserve won’t raise interest rates much, and that America’s foreign creditors — including China — won’t demand a higher premium to guard against inflation and financial risk.

Indefensible National Security Defunding

The proposed Biden budget blowout is also noteworthy for what agenda items go wanting in entirety.

Whereas most agencies would get huge increases, including Health and Human Services (23.1%), Commerce (27.7%), and EPA (21.3%), budgets for Defense (1.6%) and Homeland Security (0.2%) would actually decline after inflation.

This, after all, is a time when China poses a generational challenge, Iran is arming its proxies across the Middle East, and undocumented and unvetted migrants are flooding across our southern border with virtual impunity.

Such plans, and the priorities behind them, are defenseless.

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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