Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Biden’s Trillion-Dollar Train Wreck

By Jim Geraghty

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

 

What is the Biden presidency? The Biden presidency is . . .

 

. . . spending $1.9 trillion on the “American Rescue Plan,” commonly described as “the pandemic-relief bill,” so you can move on to . . .

 

. . . a $2.3 trillion “American Jobs Plan,” commonly described as “the infrastructure bill,” so you can move on to . . .

 

. . . a $1.8 trillion “American Families Plan,” which hasn’t gotten a nickname yet, but will probably end up being called “the education bill” because it pledges to provide, at minimum, four years of free education . . .

 

. . .so you can move on to the “Green New Deal for Cities,” which would “provide $1 trillion for struggling municipalities” . . .

 

. . . so you can move on to a “Green New Deal for Public Housing,” which would spent $180 billion to “retrofit, rehabilitate, and decarbonize the entire nation’s public housing stock,” both of which are separate from . . .

 

. . . the THRIVE Act, which would spend — excuse me, “invest” — $15 trillion over 15 years to create “family-sustaining, union jobs across the economy,” which is separate from . . .

 

. . . I guess we would call it the “Green New Deal Classic,” which originally called for eliminating 88 percent of our current energy sources, banning cars, and cutting military spending by at least half.

 

Got that? Like the old joke about the turtles, it’s massive spending bills, all the way down.

 

Fact-checkers are quick to emphasize that Biden’s infrastructure plan “is not the Green New Deal.” PolitiFact asked Greenpeace, and Greenpeace emphasized that the two proposals are different, so that settles the issue:

 

The American Jobs Plan also includes about $480 billion to boost manufacturing and research and development, some of which might boost clean energy. The THRIVE Act folds money for those activities into other line items, primarily its investments in clean energy.

 

Ryan Schleeter, spokesman for Greenpeace USA, a Green New Deal Network member, said it is misleading to equate Biden’s proposal with the Green New Deal.

 

“The American Jobs Plan is similar in intent to the THRIVE Act, but far narrower in scope and scale,” Schleeter said.

 

Good heavens, how could anyone possibly mix up those two massive new spending proposals focused on clean-energy projects? It’s like Dylan McDermott and Dermot Mulroney. They’re completely different.

 

Just in those first three Mad Libs bills listed up there — “The American [Noun] Plan” — Biden wants to spend an additional $6 trillion beyond what the federal government would ordinarily spend. That’s about a third of the entire U.S. economy, all on top of the $4.4 trillion the government spent in 2019, the last non-pandemic year.

 

I don’t know if we’re about to endure a sudden and lasting surge in inflation; the Capital Matters guys can sort that out better than I can. I do know that the Consumer Price Index had its biggest jump in about a decade last month, and the overall price index is up 2.6 percent from a year earlier. In the past month, gas prices are higher, natural gas and energy costs are higher, and food prices are higher, both at home and in restaurants. You may have noticed that suppliers are scrambling to find lumber and semiconductor chips. It sure feels like inflation is making a comeback.

 

Mark May 12 on your calendar; that’s when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics offers its next round of updated numbers. Two consecutive months of dramatic jumps in the consumer price index would suggest this wasn’t a brief, pandemic-influenced fluke.

 

One condition that can cause inflation is “too many dollars chasing too many goods” — “when the aggregate demand in an economy strongly outweighs the aggregate supply, prices go up.” If the government starts running the printing presses and throwing around money willy-nilly, but the supply of goods doesn’t keep pace, prices go up. Yes, you’ve got more money in your bank account or wallet, but so does everyone else. Prices go up, so the additional money you’ve received doesn’t help you as much.

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