Biden Budget Puts America on a Course for a ‘Growth Recession’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Late Friday afternoon — that is, late Friday afternoon of the Memorial Day weekend — when basically no one was looking, President Biden finally put out his budget. That’s when you drop bad news on the press. Find a long weekend, wait until the close of business, and then head for the hills.
There was minimal coverage, and what coverage appeared was mostly about the usual topics of $6 trillion more in spending, $4 trillion more in higher taxes, deficits as far as the eye can see, etc. etc.. There was very little new in the budget.
Except one tiny detail — there is virtually no growth in this budget.
I mean, one would think, with all the progressive, left-wing, transformational, Green New Deal, tax the rich, regulate everything, massive spending on safety net entitlements, an SBA restaurant revitalization fund that disallows assistance to white persons, welfare for illegal immigrants. open borders, phony infrastructure, punishing success, a decline in inflation-adjusted spending for homeland and defense security, more Obamacare subsidies, drug price controls, free community college, ending the XL pipeline (but building the Russian natural gas pipeline), favoring Iran, and pulling back from Israel, initially covering up the China Wuhan Lab Leak, re-entering the Paris Climate Accord, and after all this hullabaloo of radical transformation, after all this, the Biden budget still shows the same sub-2% growth of the Obama-Biden stagnation years.
So I ask, if that’s all you’ve got, why do it?
I mean, if government has any real purpose, it’s to foster policies that will make citizens safer, more secure, and more prosperous. If you’re going to transform the economy and the culture, at least show that you believe it will create more jobs, higher wages, bigger family incomes, and a rejuvenated economy — one that is, after all, still recovering from the biggest pandemic in 100 years and a terrible economic contraction that went with it.
All this, though, for less, for substandard, stagnant, less than 2% economic growth? I don’t get it. Even supposing I believed in all this central planning, socialism bureaucratizing, which I don’t, but suppose one believed this stuff. Even though it sounds a lot like a description of the Bulgarian economy before the end of the Soviet Union, or the Soviets themselves, wouldn’t you want to argue it will make the economy better?
As in, you believe this could actually work? Not for one nanosecond do I believe this would make anything work. It could have been a downtick for Bulgaria. The Biden budget is telling you it won’t work. The old East German worker’s paradise is not going to pay off.
We’re going to have the same stagnant growth we’ve had under President Obama and Vice President Biden. In political terms, it seems to me, this is not much of a selling point.
When I was growing up in the profession in the 1970s, 2% growth was labeled “a growth recession” Now we just call it stagnation. Not just stagnation but pessimism. The Democrats have become the party of pessimism.
The Democrats don’t care about growth and prosperity. They just say they do. What they want is redistribution, not growth. What they want is something called equity. Not equality. What they want is statism, not free enterprise.
Like the doctors of old, going all the way back to the Middle Ages, the medicinal cure made the patient worse, not better. The idea of do-no-harm is of recent historical vintage. But I’ll give credit to Team Biden. They have a strong sense of history. It’s just the wrong history.
Their prescription will indeed make the patient worse. And I’ll give them another credit. At least they’re upfront about it. Right there in those near-recession budget economic forecasts from their own budget office and Oval Office.
And here’s my last thought. Not only will it not work, but common sense, knowing that it will not work, strongly suggests that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. We are in an economic boom. A Trumpian boom.
A Trumpian boom is one that is from low taxes, minimal regulation, energy independence, Operation Warp Speed, vaccines, and so forth. President Biden should’ve just left it alone.
Friends, I don’t want Bulgaria. You don’t want Bulgaria. I’m not even sure President Biden really wants Bulgaria. How about a nice dose of America First, free enterprise optimism and we’ll never become what Bulgaria was in the bad old days?
________
Adapted from Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox News.