Yesterday, President Biden called on Americans to adopt a “war footing” in our ongoing fight against COVID-19. He got it and then some.
Adjusted for today’s dollars the Second World War cost $4.1 trillion.
The United States just committed to spend an additional $1.9 trillion, boosting total taxpayer pandemic spending to over $6 trillion.
This is half again what it cost to liberate the world from fascism.
We posted policy details and an extensive financial breakdown to CFACT.org.
The U.S. has not yet finished spending the funds from the last rounds of COVID relief.
Sadly, combating the virus and its economic impact is merely the tip of this latest $1.9 trillion fiscal iceberg. The bulk of the spending in the “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021” goes to a colossal left-wing wish list and a cornucopia of good old-fashioned government waste, albeit on a 21st century scale.
The Foundation for Economic Education calculated that total federal COVID spending just hit $41,870 per taxpayer.
Less than one percent of the latest spending goes to vaccines. Only ten percent is directly related to the virus.
Here’s a sampling of where the rest will go:
- $350 billion to cities, states and Indian tribes, including those running fiscal surpluses. The methodology was changed to favor states that voted for Biden. Enjoy your $26 billion windfall, California!
- $169 billion to schools and colleges, including those that refuse to open. Where’s the party teachers’ unions?
- $422 billion in $1,400 per-person stimulus checks, including to those who never missed a paycheck and even federal prisoners.
- $58 billion to bail out union pension plans.
- $25 billion in increased Obamacare subsidies.
- $30 billion to AMTRAK and transit agencies.
- Expansion of the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,600, extending the credit to people who don’t work for the first time, effectively ending the Clinton-era work-based welfare reforms.
- $1 billion in loan forgiveness for farmers based on “racial justice.” Didn’t the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbid discrimination based on race? The Left is calling this the start of “reparations.”
- $50 million in environmental justice grants. Whom do you think will receive those?
America’s national debt is approaching $30 trillion. What if (heaven forbid) we had to fight an actual world war?
“Put trust and faith in the government to protect its people,” President Biden told the nation on Thursday. “Government isn’t a foreign force in a distant capital. It’s us; it’s all of us.”
This week’s $1.9 trillion is not an end to massive “emergency” spending, but a beginning. Biden, Schumer, Pelosi and the rest plan to spend yet greater funds in the name of combating the so-called “climate emergency.”
We have entered a new and dangerous era of government expansion.
Put not your “trust and faith in government,” but rather heed a wiser president.
“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
President Reagan was right.
