OPINION:
When future historians assess President Biden’s first 100 days, it may be an event that occurred on the 42nd day of his administration that they deem the most important. On March 2, Biden quietly met for more than two hours with presidential historians who, discussing the presidencies of “some of his most admired predecessors,” Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, reinforced Mr. Biden’s desire to “think big, go big” on policy.
Given that President Roosevelt created Social Security, and President Johnson created Medicare — which, together, have done more to grow the size and scope of government than any two federal initiatives before or since — the cost of satisfying Mr. Biden’s desire for ego gratification could end up running into the trillions and could result in significantly — and negatively — changing the relationship between the U.S. citizenry and the state in ways that would have caused even Roosevelt and Johnson to recoil.
Consider:
Mr. Biden knows his agenda is so radical, so extreme, that he cannot hope to pass it and keep it intact without first fundamentally changing the rules of the political game. Consequently, he’s moving on all fronts to do just that.
That’s why Mr. Biden supports The Corrupt Politicians Act, also known as H.R. 1, a bill that would virtually federalize election administration, gut voter identification laws, mandate automatic voter registration (even for illegal immigrants), prohibit the rejection of any voter registration application, remove accountability in redistricting, turn the Federal Election Commission from a bipartisan election monitor to a partisan attack machine, and usher in a host of other so-called “reforms” that would tilt the electoral playing field permanently toward Democrats.
Then there is Biden’s intimidation of the Supreme Court. The left’s determination to redress what it sees as “imbalance” on the Supreme Court is so robust that it even includes legislation to overturn a 152-year-old bipartisan agreement that nine is the correct number of justices for the high court.
Mr. Biden’s nod to this impulse — to appoint a commission to study the issue — isn’t meant merely to assuage the radical impulses of his most extreme supporters, it’s meant to intimidate the members of the Supreme Court. “Nice court you have here,” he’s saying. “Shame if something happened to it.”
Further, Mr. Biden has made clear he’s not afraid to blow up the filibuster — and the Senate with it — if he concludes it is necessary to enact his agenda.
Moreover, on Tuesday, the Biden administration made it official: In a statement of administration policy, the Office of Management and Budget said Congress should “provide for a swift and orderly transition to statehood” for the District of Columbia, and called for passage of H.R. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act. Why? So Democrats can add two more senators to their count, in perpetuity.
So … admitting the District of Columbia as a state; breaking the filibuster if necessary; federalizing election administration and tilting the electoral playing field to the left permanently; even enlarging the Supreme Court if its justices don’t get the message. The procedural agenda demands a wholesale repeal of what makes American politics unique — our stability.
Neither Roosevelt nor Johnson — both of whom enjoyed overwhelming Democratic control of the Congress to help enact their Big Government agendas — ever imagined wielding power so ruthlessly. That Mr. Biden — who enjoys only the slimmest of majorities in each chamber on Capitol Hill — does so without thinking twice is a testament to his guile.
One hundred days in, it’s clear: If Mr. Biden has his way, the size and scope of the American government will grow to a level never even contemplated by Roosevelt or Johnson. We’ve already overspent so much for so long that the size of our national debt swamps our annual economic output, a level that has not been seen since World War II. Just how much more does Mr. Biden think we can borrow before it all comes crashing down and we’re reduced to being a somewhat larger version of Venezuela?
The political problem for Mr. Biden, of course, is that there is absolutely no evidence that the American public is with him on this radical agenda. We know what happens when presidents get too far out of touch with the electorate: The last two Democrats to hold the office overreached, and were punished by the electorate accordingly — President Bill Clinton lost control of the House and Senate and became the first Democrat since President Harry Truman to have to deal with a GOP Congress, and President Barack Obama, too, lost control of the House, and, with it, his ability to enact his agenda.
And those two Democrats weren’t even trying to break the system to enact their agendas. How will the electorate react to Mr. Biden’s willingness to repeal more than two centuries’ worth of stability in pursuit of a spot on Mount Rushmore? I smile at the thought. The midterm elections cannot get here fast enough.
• Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots.
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