Democrats push a fiscal disaster

Congressional Democrats, with the help of the biden*harris regime, are preparing two bills that will spend $4.5 trillion and $1.9 trillion over the next decade.

According to the Wall Street Journal this would be the largest spending increase in American history. The legislation is a progressive/socialist wish-list:  hundreds of billions in pork for so-called “renewable energy” grifters; a huge expansion of Medicare (as Chuck Schumer gloated), despite the program’s impending bankruptcy; free pre-K child care, longer paid family leave, a new federal child-care program, free community college, and higher subsidies for the ghastly ObamaCare, teachers unions, affordable housing, home healthcare, food subsidies and welfare programs.

It's a drunken-sailor spending binge of unimaginable proportions.  And the GOP doesn't have the votes to prevent it from becoming law.

And this proposed new splurge comes on top of the $5.3 trillion already allocated over the past year for “covid relief,” which has raised our national debt to $23.3 trillion, a dangerous 127% of GDP.  If the bills become law we will be facing a fiscal and social disaster.

Progressives for a century have championed bigger government and the redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the poor.  (The rich have innumerable ways to reduce their taxes to under 5% of income.)  Like governments going back to 500 BC they pay out the seized wealth as bribes to voters to stay in power.  And they use crises to increase their power.

For example, FDR used the Great Depression to create numerous government programs, foremost of which is the Social Security Act of 1935--which now devours 23% of the entire federal budget.

In the years since then it's gotten far worse: massive government-issued student loans, federal home loans, "free" federal health insurance, welfare, unemployment payments (disguised as "insurance"), food stamps--the list is endless.

Moreover, every federal program--without exception--always expands the "free" benefits it hands out, and widens eligibility--both of which demand a relentless expansion of government agencies.

Consider just social security: The original law was pushed as a benefit for retirees, but has expanded to cover cash for to dependent children, monthly payments for the permanently disabled (1950); cash to the disabled (1956); putting state programs for the blind and disabled under federal control (1972); adding "cost of living allowance" increases (1975), adding Children’s Health Insurance Programs (1997).

Politicians got so many votes for those "freebies" that in 1965 they created a program that would rival Social Security in cost:  "Free" medical care for everyone over 65.  That brought in so many votes that two years later the vote-buyers created a twin program to give "free" medical care to poor people UNDER 65--Medicaid.

Both Medicare and Medicaid won so many votes that the unelected bureaucrats who run the agency that runs those programs have steadily expanded what they'll pay for.  For example, both now use federal tax dollars to pay for such crucial lifesaving operations as...sex-change surgery.  Seriously.

Really, they use tax dollars to pay for sex-change surgery for 70-year-olds.

Example #2: in 1984 congressional Democrats handed Ronald Reagan a poison pill: a bill touted as "reforming" disability benefits.  What it actually did was add dozens of new maladies for which the government would pay people cash, like back pain and mental illness, both hugely vulnerable to subjective and fraudulent claims.  As anyone could predict, the number of recipients skyrocketed.

In 2003 George W. Bush signed a bill to have Medicare cover the cost of drugs for retirees.  Leviathan Inc. is a bipartisan creature.

The Left/Democrats/socialists have crushed all attempts to reform these programs.  They fire up their base by couching all such efforts as "killing grandmother," or "killing poor kids."  As a result, politicians no longer even talk about the slightest reforms. All these bribes are now called "entitlements" and are considered untouchable rights.

No one points out that these bribes are paid for with money borrowed from future generations--because that might make young voters a tiny bit less willing to vote for the pols that push to increase those bribe programs.

Democrats claim all these "entitlements" are paid for by taxes quietly deducted from employees' paychecks.  Certainly those taxes exist, but the average person will end up getting up to twice the amount they contributed.

With new, hugely expensive treatments for diseases, that ratio is destined to grow larger.  Without significant, politically toxic reforms, these programs are on course to consume every dollar of tax revenue within a few years.

Finally, Democrats don't want to teach history, because history shows that many prior societies have coped with this exact problem--and failed.  When people get used to receiving payments from "the government," disaster follows.

For example, democratic Athens in the 4th century B.C.  Despite huge debts and decreased revenues, the Assembly voted to pay citizens to attend religious festivals.  At first, excess revenues were divided between this fund and defense. But after a few years the Assembly passed another law putting all surplus revenue in the festival fund.  

"Festival days” were numerous, and their number slowly increased.  Of course once a festival day was established, no one ever tried to remove it.

The great orator Demosthenes warned that giving festival payments precedence over military preparedness was a recipe for disaster.  Soon the government was spending more paying citizens for public festivals and than on the defense of the nation-state.

Twenty-five hundred years later, Democrats are pushing the same social nonsense as Athens.  As Communist China is rapidly building up its military capabilities and advanced weapons, biden*s secretary of "Defense" and our top generals (Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs) push taxpayer-funded sex-change operations for transgender enlistees, flightsuits for pregnant pilots, fret over the phantom threat of “white supremacists,” and lecture our soldiers about “systemic racism.”

Meanwhile, Democrats push to exponentially increase entitlements and debt, even as our military spending remains static and our weapons age.

As a result, we are not preparing for two lethal threats: hyperinflation and Chinese dominance. The only question now is, is there anything that can block these two disasters before it's too late?

Adapted from a post by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/democrats-plot-fiscal-apocalypse-bruce-thornton/