OPINION:
You can’t argue with a man about his religion. All you’ll do is aggravate him.
The president’s policies are driven by blind faith in an ideology that’s failed miserably for over a century.
For President Joe Biden, the government is God. Though nominally a Catholic, his Trinity is spending, taxes and new programs. That’s why nothing will deter him from the course he’s on – including the prospect of his party getting a shellacking in the midterm election.
The president refuses to believe that anything he’s done has caused inflation – that includes his scorched-earth war on domestic energy production (now down by one-third from when he took office) and flooding the country with trillions in so-called COVID-19 relief money.
For the president, it’s all “Putin’s price hike,” gouging gas stations and greedy oil companies. But inflation was already running at 7.5% when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 23.
Before the Biden presidency, inflation was running at a stable rate of 1.4%. Now it’s 8.6%, the highest in 40 years. The average household paid an extra $460 last month, due to rising prices.
The public knows who’s to blame. According to a CNN poll, 81% say the government isn’t doing enough to fight inflation. In an NBC News poll, only 29% said they approved of Biden’s handling of the economy, while a scant 23% were okay with his handling of inflation. If he was any further underwater, he’d be renting a room in Davy Jones locker.
To make matters worse for his party, 41% said they’d base their vote in the upcoming election on inflation and higher prices, versus 10% who said abortion was their chief concern.
Regarding inflation, Mr. Biden says the public is “confused,” “frustrated” and “not focused” – typical elitist disdain for the unanointed. Don’t they know the president is their friend, benefactor and protector?
Mr. Biden’s mindset is a product of the post-McGovern Democratic Party. His half-a-century in Washington (including his 36 years in the Senate) may be seen as a form of service to his god.
The National Taxpayers Union rates members of Congress on every vote affecting taxes and spending. In 2008 (his last year in the Senate), the NTU gave Mr. Biden a 2% rating, meaning he voted for higher taxes and increased spending 98% of the time.
Except for a few years after law school, the president never worked in the private sector. He never had to meet a payroll, manage a workforce or be evaluated on his job performance. In the milieu in which he existed for almost his entire adult life, the government could never get large enough, take enough of people’s incomes or find enough ways to control their lives.
This is the religion that drives his administration. The American Rescue Plan — $1.9 trillion, ostensibly to help the nation recover from COVID-19 — was a major cause of the surge in consumer prices.
But for this president, nothing is ever enough. His infrastructure plan also has a $2 trillion price tag. Of that, only 5% would go to repairing roads and bridges. The rest is a typical Democratic boondoggle: social experiments, special interest spending and money to buy votes.
Now the president is talking about another pandemic package for the plague which he’s sure is just around the corner. Last week, he proposed allocating $82 billion for the next pandemic. It will never end as long as there’s money to be spent and votes to be stolen via mail-in ballots.
New taxes are also in the offing. The president says his tax plan would only raise taxes on “big corporations and the wealthy.” The Heritage Foundation estimates that corporate taxes would go up by one-third, making it the largest corporate tax hike in 70 years.
Biden would also allow the individual provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Job Acts to expire, costing the average family of four an additional $1,300 a year, starting in 2026. So much for tax hikes only for the rich.
Besides more pandemic spending, the administration would go hog-wild on climate change. There’s actually more for the electric car industry in the infrastructure package ($174 billion) than for roads and bridges ($115 billion).
The president’s 2023 budget is larded with new spending for child care, paid leave, abortion (under Title X), renewable energy and gender ideology. He wants to spend on everything — except defense, law enforcement and the border.
The president is exercising his First Amendment right to practice his religion. But his religion is killing the rest of us.
• Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer and syndicated columnist.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.