By Jason Smith
From the moment President Joe Biden was sworn in, Washington Democrats have been on a non-stop spending spree to grow government and force their political agenda on Americans. As a result, working-class families are increasingly seeing their way of life buried by Washington bureaucrats who have been empowered by one-party Democrat rule in the White House and Congress, driven by their explosive new spending, taxes, and debt.
Thanks to policies enacted since Biden took the Oath of Office, the federal government will spend a whopping $10 trillion more over the next decade than was projected before he was sworn in. That’s more than was spent in the first 196 years of American history, combined! Making matters worse, $2.5 trillion of that new spending will just be for a worsening economy and higher interest payments on our debt thanks to the president’s cost-of-living crisis.
The Left’s war on the working class began with their so-called American Rescue Plan, a nearly $2 trillion wasteful spending bill that has led to the highest cost of living in 40 years. And what did the American people get for it? $400 billion was spent on paying people not to work, inflaming the labor shortage by making a government check more lucrative than a job. They also included $500 billion in handouts to blue states and the wealthy elite - like $400 million for state parks and trails in Michigan, $2 million to plant trees in Syracuse, N.Y., and $15 million for a soccer stadium in New Jersey.
Even as the cost for everything from gas to groceries continued to skyrocket, Washington Democrats once again put their political priorities ahead of working-class Americans. First, they introduced the largest spending bill in U.S. history: the $5 trillion so-called Build Back Better bill. When they failed at forcing that legislation through Congress, they followed up with the Inflation Act, a bill packed full of handouts for the wealthy and big corporations, like $7,500 subsidies for families earning upwards of $300,000 to purchase luxury electric vehicles and $362 million for corporate America to make their headquarters “greener.”
And who’s covering the cost of this welfare for the wealthy? Low- and middle-income taxpayers. Washington Democrats’ Inflation Act includes $10 billion worth of new taxes on families earning less than $200,000. And to make sure working-class Americans pay up, Washington Democrats included $80 billion in the bill to supercharge the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). At a time when Americans are struggling to put food on the table, clothes on their backs, and gas in their cars, Washington Democrats just gave the IRS – an agency with an awful track record of targeting law-abiding Americans – enough resources to hire 87,000 new agents and conduct an additional one million audits annually on people earning less than $200,000.
Time and again, the Left has relied on Biden to step in and use executive actions to advance policies that are too extreme to pass the Democrat-controlled Congress, whether it’s expanding Obamacare, eliminating work requirements for able-bodied adults receiving government benefits, or canceling over $330 billion of student loan debt for wealthy doctors and lawyers earning as much as $250,000. All told, Biden’s personal spending spree – outside of Congress – has cost taxpayers an additional $1 trillion.
Lurking behind all of this reckless government spending is the Left’s relentless push to get this White House to impose their will and radical views on rural and working-class Americans. They could care less if the process to transform America means more financial hardship, fewer liberties, and less opportunity for millions of families. That’s absolutely unacceptable, and I’ll do everything in my power to protect Missouri families from the Left’s war on the working class.
