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“I don’t want to hear any more of these lies about reckless spending,” exclaimed Joe Biden last month in a speech to the AFL-CIO. “We’re changing people’s lives!”
When it comes to lies, Joe Biden sets a new presidential low by lying about lies, even his own lies—and he does it with such shameless bravado that it’s almost mind-blowingly inexplicable. He reminds me of the angry husband who confided to a friend sitting next to him at a bar.
“That wife of mine is a liar,” said the angry husband.
“How do you know?” his friend inquired.
“She didn’t come home last night and when I asked her where she’d been, she said she had spent the night with her sister, Shirley.”
“So what?” the friend asked.
“So she’s a liar. That’s what. I know because I spent the night with her sister, Shirley.”
The semi-conscious President says anybody who calls his unprecedented peacetime spending spree “reckless” is a liar. This is the same fool who tried to bloat the federal budget with another $4 trillion by way of his misnamed and misbegotten “Build Back Better” bull until Joe Manchin of West Virginia declared “Enough is enough!”
Biden is worse than just “reckless” with spending. He’s been unconscionable and oblivious at the same time—out to lunch in proposing massive outlays and utterly clueless as to the implications for the country’s debt and the value of its currency. Price inflation, one indicator of his recklessness, is six times higher today than when he took office.
He takes credit for deficit reduction even though the Congressional Budget Office says his administration added half a trillion dollars to last year’s deficit. From that “reckless” high, it’s down this year only because of the expiration of pandemic-related spending and a bounce-back from the demise of pandemic lockdowns. He has cut precisely nothing of any consequence.
If Congress had passed Biden’s Build Back Better baloney, the deficit would be soaring again. We still don’t know who drafted that pork-laden national disgrace but my money says if you asked Biden what was in it, he could tell you everything he knew about in under a minute. Really caring about how other people’s money is spent is not in the “progressive” playbook; people like Biden believe in spending for the Hell of it, and for the votes it might buy.
This is a sign of neither strong character nor sustainable policy. It reeks of the same moral cowardice and fiscal insanity that doomed great civilizations of the past. The bread and circuses that helped mightily to bankrupt ancient Rome come to mind. Where are the men and women of courage and integrity who will keep their hands in their own pockets, who will balance Washington’s budget just as you and I have to balance ours? Biden is not among them and has no aspirations to become one either. We’d better find some or kiss the dollar goodbye.
The fiscal nightmare future Americans face is no laughing matter. But since this column started with a joke and dealt with the policies of a joke, I’ll end with another joke as well. It’s from Ronald Reagan and it’s ten times as true today as when he said it 50 years ago: “Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
Crush the spenders in November before they crush the country.
Lawrence writes a weekly op-ed for El American. He is President Emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in Atlanta, Georgia; and is the author of “Real heroes: inspiring true stories of courage, character, and conviction“ and the best-seller “Was Jesus a Socialist?“ //
Lawrence escribe un artículo de opinión semanal para El American. Es presidente emérito de la Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) en Atlanta, Georgia; y es el autor de “Héroes reales: inspirando historias reales de coraje, carácter y convicción” y el best-seller “¿Fue Jesús un socialista?”