OPINION:
COVID-19 has proven costly — and not just medically speaking. The debt America is pushing on to the coming generations is unsustainable, nearing the point of enslavement.
We’re talking roughly $25 trillion-plus in national debt. And here comes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi piling for more, piling for $3 trillion more in stimulus.
Good God. Do Democrats have even an ounce of sense when it comes to spending other people’s money? Worse — given the party’s once-golden reputation for fiscal discipline: Do today’s Republicans?
Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned in early May about the potential for frivolity and misuse with the COVID-19 bailouts from Congress, writing in an op-ed for Fox that yes, in times of national crises, “extraordinary measures are not only reasonable, but they are also required” — but that national crises didn’t negate the necessity for wisdom from leaders. Wisdom and restraint.
“The biggest chunk of [CARES Act bailout money] was up to $500 billion that can be used for bailouts for large corporations, many of which have access to private capital, and their shareholders,” Haley wrote. “This is the opposite of the broad-based relief to individuals and small businesses that’s most needed. … Moreover, these bailouts turn America’s economic system on its head.”
She went on to speak of the system of savvy investing that’s often part and parcel of the money-making capacity of large corporations, and the fact that what’s good for the profiteering goose in good financial times should also be good for the losing gander in tougher financial times.
“Those investors rightly benefit from corporate profits in prosperous times; they should bear the losses when times are tough,” Haley wrote. “It is fundamentally unjust to pass that burden to ordinary taxpayers who are themselves struggling We cannot have a system where corporate gains are private and [corporate] losses are socialized.”
Right.
Right. Because the taxpayer gets sucker-punched twice. Three times, even.
Think about it: Due to COVID-19, private businesses — minus the few deemed essential by government — have been forced to close. Employees have been sent home, furloughed, even outright fired. Retail has closed; restaurants have shuttered doors; farmers are dumping their dairy and produce. These taxpayers can’t make money.
So other taxpayers are stepping up to the plate and, by way of congressionally passed stimulus bills, congressionally ordered redistribution schemes, providing more from their own pockets to pay for those who have less. It’s one thing to pay for the small business owners who are the backbone of America’s free market; it’s entirely another to take from Peter to give to Wall Street Paul.
Or, to take from Peter and give to state governments that are run by Democrats who are about as sensible with money as a crackhead with a stash.
Or, to take from Peter and give to hospitals and medical facilities that have been ordered closed except for COVID-19 patients — you know, all those COVID-19 patients who simply did not come. Now where do hospitals get their money?
From you. From me. From that ever-dwindling group of Americans known as The Taxpayer. Or, more colloquially, The Sucker Class.
Unless America opens quick and opens wide, that group, that paying and providing group, will dry up and disappear. And then who will provide those stimulus dollars? Or any dollars at all, for that matter?
“It is impossible to wisely spend nearly $3 trillion in two months,” Haley wrote.
She’s right. But that doesn’t stop Congress — in particular, the Democrats in Congress — for calling for more. More money, more spending, more burdens on the backs of The Sucker Class.
The spending is unsustainable.
Even when business is wide open and the economy chugging along well, such levels of government spending are unsustainable. But now, with all these forced shutdowns and socialist redistribution of resources’ schemes? It won’t be long before taxpayers’ backs will eventually break.
Until that day, though, until the final breaking of backs, America’s workers, America’s business owners — most immorally, America’s emerging, innocent youth — will live in virtual slavery. These trillions of dollars, after all, do not grow on trees.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.
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