Colin Reed: Biden, Dems' spending spree – country's future depends on conservatives doing this
Biden's next legislative priority is a $3 trillion 'infrastructure' package
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Imagine a world where generous government giveaways are incentivizing workers to stop showing up for work, even for good-paying jobs. Or where employers cannot find applicants for the 6.9 million unfilled jobs in the United States because of the all the free money flowing. Perhaps checks are being handed to undeserving or even dead recipients.
All of these scenarios could be unfolding right now as the tentacles of the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion relief package take hold. After all, whenever a bill of this magnitude is passed a quickly as this one was without any bipartisan support, there are bound to be some nasty surprises lurking within.
Sometimes, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made famous during ObamaCare, you have to pass a bill to know what’s in it.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But the world would never know because the GOP opposition and oversight of the stimulus is nonexistent. And that’s a shame.
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It may be too late to put the brakes on Biden’s first bloated bill, but his spending spree is just getting started. His next legislative priority is a $3 trillion – yes, you read that number correctly – package.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Biden and his team are already framing the gargantuan bill under the umbrella of "infrastructure," but as the Wall Street Journal noted, it will, "fulfill key elements of President Biden’s campaign agenda." In other words, a goodie bag chock full of the left’s wish list.
Now is the time for conservatives to rediscover their religion on fiscal restraint. The financial future of our country depends on it.
After all, a tab that includes $400 billion for climate change, $60 billion for green transit and $46 billion for climate-related research and development, as the Washington Post reported in its early details of the package, is not going to pay for itself.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The GOP is without control of any of the levers of government – a position that provides freedom and flexibility.
All this spending comes as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that our national debt will be the double the size of our economy by 2051. China is laughing all the way to the bank.
Yes, the bonds between Republicans and fiscal conservatism were frayed during the Trump years, a two-pronged byproduct of a populist president and a once-in-a-century pandemic. Republicans are never going to be able to outspend the Democrats. If they cannot do a better job communicating with voters about the perils of government spending run amok, they only have themselves to blame if the voters reelect the party with the more generous handouts. Why shouldn’t they?
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Recent history offers a roadmap back to relevance. During the Obama years, the minority GOP thundered at the ballooning debt, deficit and ever-growing size of government. They laid the blame squarely on the doorsteps of the ruling Democrat majorities in Congress, castigating them as enablers of an agenda increasingly seen as risky and reckless.
Lo and behold, when the check came due for all the spending, the Democrats paid the political price – to the tune of a 63-seat wipeout in the House of Representatives and six Senate seats flipping parties.
Fast forward to today and the loudest and most consistent voice warning against the runaway government spending is Larry Summers – a former top economic adviser to President Clinton and Obama. Summers labeled recent events, "the least responsible macroeconomic policy we've had in the last 40 years."
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Someday, Republicans will need to put forward their own policy plan to address our nation’s challenges without mortgaging the financial well-being of generations yet to come. Today is not that day.
Right now, the GOP is without control of any of the levers of government – a position that provides freedom and flexibility. The freedom to sound the alarm on the dangers of the left’s spending spree, and the flexibility to come up with their own agenda when the time is right.
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