OPINION:
President Joe Biden’s first few weeks in office have been spent ramming through executive order after executive order; opening borders and messaging of the even wider open borders to come; upsetting the America First agenda of the previous Donald Trump administration; spending billions on stimulus that’s not so much coronavirus-related as spread-the-wealth socialist; calling for massive gun control; calling for massive tax hikes — all with the backing of the Democrats controlling both House and Senate.
At this rate, by the end of the year, America as we know it will be no more. America the free? Try America like Venezuela.
The U.S. debt alone is unsustainable.
As the Congressional Budget Office forecast in February 2019, “trillion-dollar deficits will soon be a permanent feature of the U.S. government’s fiscal outlook for as far into the future as they are willing to look.”
That was when the national deficit stood at $22 trillion. Now it’s more than $27 trillion.
To put some meaning into those figures: According to CBO figurings, each dollar of debt brings a reduction of 33 cents in domestic investments — meaning, the growth of the U.S. economy suffers.
Meaning, the debt burden on each and every American citizen grows heavier and heavier.
Here’s more of what CBO said a couple of years ago: “In 10 years, the publicly held portion of the national debt will rise from $16.6 trillion in 2019, about 78 percent of today’s GDP, to $31.0 trillion in 2029, or about 93 percent of what the CBO projects GDP will be 10 years from now.”
Where are the Republicans?
Where is the so-called party of fiscal responsibility?
Nowadays, silenced by Democrats. Democrats hold all the major offices of power on Capitol Hill, Biden is out and about chatting up looming tax hikes — to pay for his $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus, dontcha know. And the only so-called growth plan on the horizon from the ruling left-leaners in Washington is the one that brings regulatory crackdowns, i.e. higher prices, i.e. climate change economics, or that uses tax dollars to create tax-paid jobs, i.e. infrastructure repair.
Between 1965 and the early 1980s, the government kept debt around 40 percent of GDP. In the 1990s, debt rose to about 65 percent of GDP. By 2018, that figure was hitting at 110 percent, according to the Mercatus Center.
In fiscal 2020, Treasury reported a record $3.1 trillion deficit for the year, bringing the total to roughly 102 percent of GDP. Of course, the coronavirus played into that. But if America doesn’t get a handle on its deficit, there will come a time when the belief of America to pay back its debt will fall.
Countries unable to service debt deal with hyperinflation, defaults, depressions and societal upheavals. Printing paper money is a temporary — fake — fix.
And gas prices keep rising.
And unemployment stands above 6 percent.
And Biden just spent $1.9 trillion to keep the unemployed at home.
And Democrats keep pushing for more and more tax dollars to pay for pet projects that put more and more debt onto the backs of American citizens — while simultaneously, opening border doors to let in more migrants who will then receive tax-paid entitlements in exchange for voting Democrat.
And now the left wants a registry to know who the gun owners are and where they live?
“Venezuela’s Collapse Is the Worst Outside of War in Decades,” The New York Times wrote in May of 2019.
Wait.
With Democrats in charge until at least November 2022, America may very well take that title.
• 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. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.