Editors at the Washington Examiner pan the president’s approach to his opening 100 days.
President Joe Biden laid out the case that in order to beat China, the United States needs to be a little bit more like China.
According to Biden, we need a more heavy-handed industrial policy, we need to get children in government-run schools at a younger age. We need to shift higher education more toward government-run schooling. We need to expand federal control.
Biden even had the audacity to bash “trickle-down economics” in a speech calling on the federal government to subsidize green energy companies in the name of “jobs, jobs, jobs.”
It’s obvious what the White House was doing. It is laying out the case for a radically expanded role for the federal government in our lives. Every reporter in Washington excitedly chirped out the talking points: It’s a new New Deal! The era of big government is back! A coherent vision for a greater government role in our lives!
Thanks, but no thanks.
Over the last year, people have had quite enough government in their lives, thank you very much. We do not welcome more Biden, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, or Xavier Becerra. As the vaccines drive the pandemic into the dust, people want the weight of the state lifted off their shoulders. We know politicians and bureaucrats hope they can hang on to their power forever, just as the central planners in the World Wars hoped to hang on to their planning powers. But the dysfunction, the corruption, the hypocrisy, and the “noble lies” of state and federal coronavirus responses have not filled anyone with an appetite for more government.
Then, there is the obvious one: the cost. The federal government spent $6.55 trillion in 2020. Biden wants to increase that radically by many more trillions. He calls the spending “investments.” He calls it all “infrastructure.” What it is, is costly.
