President Biden has unveiled another $1.8 trillion government-spending package ahead of tonight’s joint session speech to Congress, bringing the total spending signed or proposed in his first 100 days to about $6 trillion.
Let’s see how we got here.
When Biden took office, he pushed a massive spending package as “COVID relief” even though only about 5 percent of the spending was directly related to fighting the pandemic. That cost $1.9 trillion.
Once that passed, he proposed another bill, pitched as infrastructure legislation, which was mostly made up of provisions that have nothing to do with infrastructure. The proposed price tag is $2.25 trillion.
Today, he has unveiled another grab bag of spending on other liberal priorities. Those include subsidized childcare, an Obamacare expansion, universal pre-K, and two years of free community college. The price tag for this one is pegged at $1.8 trillion.
Taken together, that would add up to $5.95 trillion, not including the interest payments on the national debt.
There will be plenty of time in the months ahead to debate the substance of the proposals. However, it’s worth keeping in mind how extraordinary this spending is.
It is not coming at a time of huge surpluses, but at a time when debt exceeds the annual gross domestic product for the only time in the nation’s history other than World War II. It’s coming as a flood of Baby Boomers are retiring and as health-care costs rise.
This is not a moderate agenda by Biden. It is a radical and reckless agenda.