NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
When I came to Washington, DC, in 1985, Ronald Reagan was president. I worked for Reagan’s budget office. We did something that we weren’t very proud of at the time. We introduced the first $1 trillion budget in American history, which was unthinkable. A trillion dollars. There are 12 zeros in a trillion. A trillion is a million dollars multiplied by a million. The budget deficit reached $200 billion and 6% of our entire GDP. Again, unthinkable.
Now fast forward 37 years later. Today’s budget is nowhere near $1 trillion. In 2021, President Joe Biden’s first year in office, federal spending amounted to just under $7 trillion ($6.81 trillion, to be exact). Thus, in less than four decades, the budget has increased sevenfold. Much faster than inflation. Much faster than economy. The government is now gobbling up the economy, spending up to 30% of our national production. Add state and local government spending, and we’re close to 40%.
We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on unemployment insurance programs without any quality control, so over $100 billion was distributed to fraudulent claims. Billions of dollars have gone to criminals living in Nigeria, South Africa and Mexico. It is a stimulus for the economy.
NO, BIDEN DID NOT SAVE THE ECONOMY
The Wall Street Journal found that we’ve spent tens of billions of dollars on the New York City subway, even though ridership has dropped by two-thirds. We could practically offer every passenger a free limo service, which would be cheaper for taxpayers. More money has gone to New York’s subway system than all the federal money for COVID-19 treatments, according to the Wall Street Journal.
We spent so much money on welfare programs that many families with two unemployed parents who were collecting all the government payments could get $100,000 or more from taxpayers and not work a single hour.
We continue to provide billions of dollars a year to subsidize wind and solar energy, which accounts for about 7% of our total energy production.
Much of the $100 billion earmarked for schools remains untraceable. Nobody seems to know where the money went, and nobody seems to care or want to do anything about it.
The $6.8 trillion the government spent in 2021 was $2.4 trillion more than government spending in 2019 before the pandemic began. The federal government has spent nearly $4 trillion over two years to contain COVID, which has not been contained. Well, it’s money well spent!
Biden’s solution to the budget and the borrowing boom is to tax, tax, tax.
Could things with the virus have been worse if the government hadn’t spent anything and there hadn’t been any shutdowns? This could be the most epic failure of great government in the history of the world.
Yet Biden says bluntly that the problem with the economy, inflation, and runaway energy prices is that we haven’t spent $5 trillion. Following for his Build Back Better monstrosity. So we have a chairman of the House budget committee, questioned about the wisdom of running $2 trillion in deficits every year, saying, “We can spend and borrow whatever we want.” No problem. They spend money like it’s M&Ms.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE AVIS NEWSLETTER
Even the New York Times admitted that Biden’s spending programs offer Americans “cradle-to-grave government.” Do Americans want this? Are we like Linus, the “Peanuts” cartoon character who wears his blanket like a safety vest wherever he goes?
Biden’s solution to the budget and the borrowing boom is to tax, tax, tax. But in 2021, Americans paid $4 trillion in federal taxes. This represented 18% of our GDP, which is above the recent historical average.
There is no income problem today in Washington but a spending pandemic. In my new book, “Govzilla,” I document the relentless historical growth of government in America. We were supposed to have limited government, but now we have unlimited government.
In his first year alone, proposed spending under Biden exceeds what was spent on all the wars we’ve fought, building the intercontinental railroad, the interstate highway system, and the moon landing.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
The spendthrift monster Govzilla is devouring our economy and our freedoms. At least Reagan tried to fight the tyranny of big government – sometimes successfully, sometimes not. His warning when he ran for president in 1980 was as prescient today as it was then: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you want. have.”
Meanwhile, Biden says his billions of dollars in spending “are free — they won’t cost anything.” In fact, the costs are incalculable.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE BY STEPHEN MOORE