Answering the deficit doves
President Biden and congressional Democrats are trying to enact the largest government borrowing binge since World War II. This year’s cascade of new entitlements, social spending, and (loosely defined) infrastructure projects is likely to cost significantly more than last year’s more justified $3 trillion legislative response to the pandemic.
The spending spree began with the March enactment of a $1.9 trillion “stimulus” bill consisting largely of relief checks and bailouts to states that were already running budget surpluses. The Senate has since passed a $550 billion infrastructure bill that is funded largely with gimmicks, and has moved on to a $3.5 trillion infrastructure proposal that can include up to $1.75 trillion in new deficits. The president’s proposed 8.4 percent discretionary-spending increase would raise the spending baseline and thus likely cost $1 trillion over the decade. Another $1 trillion would come from renewing Democratic policies that currently use fake expiration dates to hide their long-term cost (after all, no one believes lawmakers will actually allow the child-tax-credit expansions to expire).
Continue reading the entire piece here at National Review
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Brian M. Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
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