In late March, President Biden claimed, “After my predecessor’s fiscal mismanagement, we’re reducing the Trump deficits and getting our fiscal house back in order.” He added, “We’re making real headway cleaning up the fiscal mess I inherited.”
In reality, Biden, with the help of congressional Democrats, has engaged in an 18-month spending binge that is unprecedented in American history. In fact, in less than two years, the Biden administration has spent a mind-boggling $3.8 trillion on new programs, which is the primary reason inflation remains at a 40-year-high and the economy is on the cusp of stagflation.
During President Trump’s term, the annual deficit was less than $1 trillion in 2017, 2018, and 2019. In 2020, the year of the pandemic, the deficit ballooned to $3.2 trillion due to the government’s massive pandemic spending programs.
When Biden took office in early 2021, the worst of the pandemic was over. Yet, Biden’s budget deficit in 2021 was $2.8 trillion, well above the pre-pandemic norm.
Below is a brief breakdown of Biden’s $3.8 trillion spending bonanza:
-The American Rescue Plan: $1.9 trillion
-The Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework: $1.2 trillion
-The CHIPS Act: $280 billion
-The Gun Violence Act: $13 billion
-The Inflation Reduction Act: $737 billion
This begs the question: Who is going to pay for all of this?
Obviously, not the poor; they are the recipients of much of this largesse in the form of transfer payments. Nor will the rich, who have an army of lobbyists, lawyers, and accountants at their disposal. However, the middle-class are a prime target to foot the bill. Perhaps this is why Biden and desperate Democrats, under the guise of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, have decided to supercharge the IRS with $85 billion in new funding and the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents.
How long can this redistribution ruse last? As Margaret Thatcher once said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden. Photo by NASA. Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).
Chris Talgo ([email protected]) is the editorial director and a research fellow at The Heartland Institute, as well as a researcher and contributing editor at StoppingSocialism.com.
