Ben Shapiro: No, Government Spending Isn't 'Zero Cost'
By Ben Shapiro | September 29, 2021 | 10:49am EDT
President Joe Biden made the incredible Saturday statement — sycophantically repeated by the press — that his $3.5 trillion budget bill, which includes major spending initiatives on everything from climate change to Medicare, would be free. Biden tweeted, "My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars. Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America."
This asinine notion immediately rocketed around the political sphere. White House press secretary Jen Psaki explained, "The reconciliation package will cost zero dollars." Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said, "This is a zero-dollar bill because it's all going to be paid for with taxes on the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest individuals, which makes it more popular than it even was before." Members of the media began repeating the line ad nauseum. The reason was obvious: Democrats are trying to cudgel Republicans into acquiescing.
Putting aside the contention that Biden's bill would be paid for through tax increases — a doubtful proposition, given that the Democrats have been playing accounting games by extending particular allowances for just a handful of years, or backloading new costs until years down the road — the baseline notion that government spending is zero-cost so long as it doesn't take on new debt is bonkers. It's the equivalent of arguing that so long as someone pays for a cocaine-fueled gambling binge in Vegas in cash, the experience has been cost-free.
Biden, however, goes even further. In his addled brain, allowing taxpayers to retain their own money is "wasting money;" spending trillions of dollars on social programs that pervert market incentives and often achieve the precise opposite of their stated intentions is an "investment." Such a designation divests language of meaning. If you steal my wallet and find $100 inside, proceed to inform me that giving me back $20 would be "wasting money," snidely notify me that you will be "investing" in a steak dinner for yourself and then cap your performance by stating that the dinner is "zero-cost," you would deserve a rather thorough thrashing. Do it in the context of national politics, however, and the media will cheer.
All of this is predicated on a lie: that the state is the ultimate source of property and wealth. If that were true, the state would certainly have every ability to maximize its own power by shifting that property around to political allies. In fact, this is precisely what Thomas Hobbes argued in "Leviathan": that the sovereign was the ultimate arbiter of property, as the ultimate repository of force.
The American system was founded in direct opposition to this idea. As James Madison wrote, "Government is instituted to protect property of every sort....This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own." Madison added, "That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest."
Biden would call just such sorts of arbitrary seizures "investments." After all, they're free. To Biden, such language seems natural: he is a career-long ward of the state, on the taxpayer dole every year of his life since the age of 29 — the only exceptions being the years between his vice presidency and his presidency, when he was giving speeches and writing books about his government years while allegedly avoiding half a million dollars in taxes. To him, taxpayer dollars are free, and they have been an investment: in him. Now, he simply wishes to extend that logic outward, using taxpayer dollars to "invest" in his legacy, in structures that incentivize dependency and therefore Democratic electoral power.
What's the harm? It's cost-free.
Except it isn't. The engine of American growth has never been the government. It has been restrictions on governmental power and bureaucratic arbitrariness. Innovation requires freedom; investment requires both liberty of choice and impartiality of governing system. The heavy hand of government will be damnedly costly.
Ben Shapiro, 37, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers "How To Destroy America In Three Easy Steps," "The Right Side Of History," and "Bullies."
Hilton: Biden is an 'utterly mediocre machine-politician, surrounded by amateurs'
CNN Shows One Broken Promise After Another in Devastating Takedown of Biden Presidency
Biden Sinking
Approval ratings are plummeting. Here's why.
President Joe Biden’s approval ratings are plummeting. In the latest Gallup poll, Biden’s approval rating declined to a new low of 43 percent. Other polls are also showcasing Biden’s loss of popularity as Americans are seeing the real Joe Biden in action.
Explanations for the public’s loss of faith in Biden’s leadership include his Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, the immigration crisis, inflation, mixed messages in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, his divisiveness, and questions regarding his competence.
There may be even a more overarching reason, however, why many Americans are becoming disillusioned with Biden. Biden got elected in no small measure because voters perceived that he was a straight shooter who understood and cared about the problems of average Americans. Biden is no longer seen that way by many Americans, especially independents who had flocked to his side in the 2020 election.
The results of a recent poll published by Pew Research on September 23rd demonstrate that Biden is losing some of the confidence the American people had in his personal traits earlier in his term, as well as in his handling of various policy issues.
“Compared with March, fewer adults say Biden cares about people like them, and fewer describe him as standing up for his beliefs, honest, a good role model and mentally sharp,” Pew reported. Americans are also questioning Biden’s claims about unifying the country. According to Pew, “only about a third (34%) are confident he can bring the country closer together, a 14 percentage point decline since March.”
The false and misleading statements on the Afghanistan debacle and the border crisis coming out of Biden’s own mouth, as well as from his press secretary and other members of his administration, have certainly hurt Biden’s credibility. But it is also becoming evident to more and more Americans that Biden and the progressive Democrats in Congress to whom he caters do not really care much about the day-to-day struggles of ordinary Americans. Indeed, Congress’s approval rating today under Democratic control is even lower than Biden’s – 27 percent, according to the latest Gallup poll.
Biden likes to portray himself as a friend of the little guy who vows to close tax loopholes exploited by the rich. But he has shown no hesitancy in taking advantage of a payroll tax loophole himself. Americans don’t like double standards.
Biden tries to project an image of integrity but looks the other way as his son Hunter leverages access to the highest levels of government power for personal gain.
Biden and his fellow Democrats in Congress are trying to sell the American people a bill of goods with their trillions of dollars of spending proposals. They are in the process of ramming these proposals through Congress on an entirely partisan basis via the budget reconciliation process. Votes on the legislation are being delayed for a few days because of intra-party disagreements over size and some of the details between the progressive base and more moderate Democrats in the House and the Senate. But Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are intent on pushing their massive tax-and-spend legislation past the finish line, even if they have to agree to some cosmetic changes to make this happen.
Meanwhile, Biden is trying to sell his “Build Back Better Act” with smoke and mirrors. He has said, for example, that it will be all paid for by taxes on corporations and the wealthy. The average American has nothing to worry about, according to Biden. Not true.
The legislation does constitute perhaps the biggest redistribution of wealth in American history, but average Americans will still have plenty to worry about. To start with, Biden is pressing for more powers granted to the Internal Revenue Service to collect information from banks regarding all accounts with more than $600! Not exactly limited to the rich and famous.
More debt will be piled on the backs of Americans’ children and grandchildren to pay for the Democrats’ radical wish list.
The Tax Foundation estimated that the Democrat-controlled House Ways and Means Committee's proposal the foundation analyzed earlier this month “would reduce long-run economic output by 0.98 percent and eliminate 303,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the United States. It would also reduce after-tax incomes for the top 80 percent of taxpayers over the long-run.”
The fact that this $3.5 trillion monstrosity will drive inflation up to even more dangerous levels than today, hurting lower income people most of all, does not matter to Biden and the overwhelming majority of congressional Democrats. Putting food on the table, filling the gas tank, and buying other basic necessities are keeping many Americans up at night. These are the people Biden says he wants to help. But the truth is that in the name of radical “social justice” and “equity,” Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive House Squad, etc. are perfectly willing to impose economic distress on Americans just trying to get by.
The so-called “human infrastructure” bill, with its multi-trillion-dollar price tag, hands money out for free community college and universal pre-K without any means test. Thus, the children of wealthy families, who can certainly afford to pay for their own children’s pre-K and college expenses, will get a free ride, courtesy of less well-off taxpayers. It also means more federal control of education, with the potential for critical race theory and other left-wing dogma spoon fed to kids as young as 3 and 4 years old.
Illegal immigrants are pouring into the United States in record numbers, thanks to the Biden administration’s open border policies. Thousands of the Haitians who entered the country illegally in recent weeks have been dispersed throughout the country under Biden’s catch-and-release policy. They were not required to be vaccinated, or even to be tested, for COVID-19.
In Biden’s America, residents legally residing in the United States are facing COVID-19 vaccine and testing mandates as a condition for their employment or for returning to the United States from abroad. However, unvaccinated, untested illegal immigrants are free to fan out across the country to potentially spread the virus and take jobs away from lower income Americans.
As more and more Americans see the real Joe Biden for themselves, their confidence in Biden’s presidency will continue to erode.
‘Biden Lied’: Marsha Blackburn Calls for POTUS to Resign over Afghanistan Debacle
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Tuesday called on President Joe Biden to resign over his fatally botched withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, accusing the Commander-in-Chief of making false statements about advice he received on pulling out from the war-torn country.
Testifying publicly before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and head of U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie both said they recommended keeping some U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
“I won’t share my personal recommendation to the president, but I will give you my honest opinion and my honest opinion and view shaped my recommendation,” McKenzie told lawmakers. “And I recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.”
“I also have a view that the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government,” he added.
Milley told lawmakers that while he would not divulge his “personal” recommendations to Biden, he believed that “back in the fall of 2020, and remained consistent throughout, that we should keep a steady state of 2,500 and it could bounce up to 3,500, maybe, something like that, in order to move toward a negotiated solution.”
The testimonies of Milley and McKenzie raise questions as to whether Biden lied to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos during an August 19th sit-down in which the president said he could not recall whether his military advisors urged him to maintain a U.S. presence in Afghanistan.
Below is a partial transcript of the exchange in question between Biden and Stephanopoulos:
STEPHANOPOULOS: But your top military advisors warned against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops.
BIDEN: No, they didn’t. It was split. Tha– that wasn’t true. That wasn’t true.
STEPHANOPOULOS: They didn’t tell you that they wanted troops to stay?
BIDEN: No. Not at — not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a timeframe all troops. They didn’t argue against that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So no one told — your military advisors did not tell you, “No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that”?
BIDEN: No. No one said that to me that I can recall. Look, George, the reason why it’s been stable for a year is because the last president said, “We’re leaving. And here’s the deal I wanna make with you, Taliban. We’re agreeing to leave if you agree not to attack us between now and the time we leave on May the 1st.”
The seemingly contracting recollectings of Biden and McKenzie and Milley prompted Blackburn to call for Biden’s resignation.
“Biden lied when he told Stephanopoulos no one advised him against his timeline-based withdrawal. His recklessness resulted in the deaths of 13 US servicemembers and abandonment of countless citizens & allies. Biden can’t avoid the consequences of his actions. He must resign,” the senator wrote on Twitter.
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