Millions of Americans recently saw their bank accounts grow by $1400 or some multiple thereof. They have been told that these shekels are part of what it’s going to take to help America recover from the economic ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. That many of these ravages were inflicted by government excess is neither here nor there, of course. Neither is the question of whence this $1.9 trillion dollars of government largesse.
This $1.9T, dubbed the American Rescue Plan (before you ask “rescue from whom,” read on…) comes on the tails of $2.2T disbursed last year via the CARES Act. Of course, this being product of 21st century politics, the Plan is far more than just a distribution of ephemeral specie to Americans (whether they need it or not). Only 22% of the total allocates to these stimulus checks. Another 13% is for enhanced unemployment (which works against economic restoration, because it disincentivizes many from returning to work), and 12% more provides for various individual ‘needs.’
As for the other (more than) half? We’re still finding out what’s in the bill, well after it has passed. $350B is transferring directly to state and local governments, some of which are using it to bail themselves out of grotesque malfeasance in (under)funding their pension obligations, and which in some cases is putting states in actual surplus (but they’re not allowed to cut taxes). Another couple hundred billion is going to education, despite the half-century’s worth of evidence that pouring ever more money into the existing system has utterly failed to produce result improvements. Like an endless stream of Christmas presents, there’s more and more to parse every day.
Let’s call this “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” approach to governance and public spending the Pelosi Paradigm, as an homage to Madame Speaker’s blunt condescension regarding ObamaCare some years back.
The bill, passed in purely partisan fashion via rules-lawyering in the Senate (aka this “reconciliation” business), illustrates the Democrats’ modus operandi: talk about bipartisanship, ignore the Republicans entirely, and spend spend spend as if the credit card has no limit. On deck is a $2T infrastructure bill that one Senator “oops” revealed is going to be passed via similar legislative dodging of the Senate filibuster (even as the Left’s pressure on Senators Manchin and Sinema to renege on their promises not to support repealing the filibuster entirely mounts).
Meanwhile, the promise of open arms and infinite largesse has prompted a swarm of Central and South Americans (and others) to migrate toward America’s southern border. By some reports (there’s a whole lot of quashing going on), two hundred thousand are expected to enter the country illegally every month. And, overt gaslighting aside, they’re coming because Biden and the Dems made it clear they were welcome to. As regular readers know, I favor robust immigration, but this is nothing more than chaos and a humanitarian disaster in the offing.
By now, Biden’s executive order flurry, scarcely two months old, is ancient history and fait-accompli. No matter that he undid some of the things that revitalized the economy four years ago, or that some of his actions seem to motivated by nothing more than TDS and the desire to undo anything that his Orangeness did, merits notwithstanding. And there were more than a few Trump actions that were of real and significant benefit to the country. If you find yourself chewing wasps over the mere idea of that, you should really take a personal time out.
The nation feels as fractured as it ever has in my lifetime, and the party in charge seems wholly uninterested in using its near-full control of government to make it better. Endless riots in Portland and elsewhere are ignored, scandals only matter when they are perpetrated by those from the right side of the aisle, an electoral system that produced massive chaos and distrust is being contorted by the Democrats to create even more such, and blue-state leaders are insisting on perpetuating useless and harmful pandemic policies despite all evidence and the increasing vaccination of the public. Everything they’re doing stinks of partisan imposition of will rather than reconciliation and pushes toward normalcy.
It’s pretty clear that all this is about the Democrats seeking to establish their political dominance for the foreseeable future. They’re buying as many constituencies, votes, and interest groups as they can, and they’re rewriting all the rules they can to favor themselves and their own. Their risk, and one too many of them are blind to, is that they’re breaking the country they want to run. They are a collective doomsday machine, in cult-like thrall not only to an endlessly failed and murderous political philosophy (socialism/collectivism/statism) and crackpot economic theories like MMT, but also desperately hungering for the environmental calamity they’ve been predicting for decades to finally occur. The all-in embrace of an illogical and massively destructive response to the high-side risk from global warming reeks of religious fervor rather than scientific reason or economic analysis.
The Democrats are looking to buy permanent control of the nation. I don’t believe they’ve thought this “purchase” through, though. Breaking the product during its purchase is a recipe for quite a bit of buyer’s remorse.
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