Biden’s Entitlement Blowout

Biden’s Entitlement Blowout

Quid Pro Joe – By Howard Sierer –

Pres. Biden’s American Families Plan proposes to extend federal entitlements to an additional 21 million Americans, putting over half of all working-age American households on the dole for the first time in history. Once enacted, it will be a political impossibility to pare any of them back, much less repeal them, no matter how costly, flawed or ineffective they turn out to be.

Unlike traditional federal expenditures, entitlement program spending is open-ended. Any individual or entity meeting certain qualifications is “entitled” to receive prescribed federal benefits. Quid Pro Joe

Today’s major entitlement programs are familiar: Social Security, disability insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, college student loans and grants, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Obamacare. The list goes on to more specialized entitlements: farm subsidies, the Export-Import Bank, veterans’ services, and many others. With the notable exception of Obamacare, each was popular when enacted and unsurprisingly, most continue to enjoy widespread support from their benefit recipients.

All these federal entitlement programs were enacted with noble intent. Almost all have been irresponsibly expanded by Congress and their costs have ballooned far beyond original projections.

Medicaid was once a safety-net program but now covers 37% of Californians. Food stamps and nutrition programs started as help for the poor but now covers 42 million Americans. Medicare started as coverage for seniors but now the Democratic Party wants it to cover everyone over age 55. Quid Pro Joe

Autopilot spending on these open-ended programs plus interest on the national debt already totals over two-thirds of the federal budget and continues to grow in both dollars and as a percentage. Our federal government is becoming an insurance company with an army.

On top of this already uncontrolled spending, progressive Democrats now propose to add another $2.5 trillion. Examples:

• Free community college tuition for all regardless of family income
• Daycare costs for preschoolers; a family with two children and up to $130,000 in income would qualify
• Federal wage subsidies for up to 12 weeks of time for care of newborns or sick family members
• Health insurance subsidies that in some cases would apply to families with incomes over $200,000

Shockingly, working-age households in the upper half of income distributions would receive 40% of the new entitlement benefits. Don’t expect to read that in the liberal media.

Congressional Democrats propose to use a familiar pattern of making what were billed as emergency programs permanent. Emergency responses to the pandemic such as Obamacare subsidies and refundable tax credits for child care, passed in March of this year, were sold as temporary measures. A month later, Biden proposed to make them permanent.

While the administration claims its plan will cost $1.8 trillion, the far more reliable Penn Wharton Budget Model predicts it will actually cost taxpayers $2.5 trillion. And even these numbers are achieved only by Democrats’ tongue-in-cheek budget projections that a number of the benefits will end after five years. History shows they’ll never end.

More shenanigans are used to explain how this all will be funded. “Make the rich pay their fair share” is the standard canard when Congressional Democrats want to spend. But the top 1% of individual taxpayers already pay 40% of federal income tax while the top 25% pay over 87%. The bottom 50% pay only 2.4%.

How about raising corporate income taxes? There’s no better way to drive manufacturing and R&D offshore. Bottom line: Congressional Democrats expect the Federal Reserve will continue printing money to cover it all.

In years past when dramatic new entitlement spending programs were proposed – Johnson’s Great Society and Obama’s eponymous Obamacare – Democrats held substantial majorities in Congress. In those situations, they could claim a mandate for change.

Today’s Senate is split 50-50 and Democrats’ nine-seat House majority is the slimmest majority held by either party in 88 years. This is no mandate for anything other than what Biden promised during his campaign for office and what he was saying up until inauguration day: reaching across the aisle for a bipartisan approach to government.

Instead, we find Congressional Democrats proposing programs explicitly intended to make the middle-class dependent on government handouts.

When will this stop? While progressives will deny it, it’s clear they’ve embraced Karl Marx’s slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

We’re clearly on a path where the federal government confiscates increasing percentages of our earnings and doles them back out to citizens according to how the political winds are blowing each year.

Welcome to the “democratic socialism” that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and their radical-left fellow travelers espouse. Not to worry: Big Brother in Washington DC has your best interests at heart.

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