How the Left Has Used COVID-19 to Bankrupt the United States

Stephen Moore Jul 29, 2021

I have never bought the conspiracy theories that COVID-19 was a diabolical political plot to undermine the country. But what is apparent with each passing week is that the virus has been the springboard for the left's agenda to transform America in a way that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Michael Moore or Rachel Maddow could have never imagined.

Without COVID-19, President Joe Biden would never have been elected, of course. So, for the left, the virus defeated former President Donald Trump. COVID-19 is now the gateway to the left's utopian agenda of multitrillion-dollar climate policies, hyper-regulation of the economy, the rebirth of the welfare state and a radical redistribution of income.

Under Trump policies, we had one of the most robust financial and economic expansions on record, especially regarding minority advancement and historic reductions in poverty. The entitlement state was in retreat as income growth and record job openings pushed millions of people out of the welfare state into work. If the left truly cared about the plight of the poor, they would have celebrated. Instead, the results showing tax cuts, deregulation and laissez-faire policies work made liberals miserable.

COVID-19 made the rebirth of big government possible. Last year, with Trump still in the White House, Congress spent $6 trillion, much of it (such as the $600 a week bonus unemployment benefits) wastefully and ineffectively. But it was emergency spending.

The National Bureau of Economic Research recently declared the recession ended in April of 2020, and the recovery has been accelerating thanks to the vaccine.  We would be aggressively cutting government spending in a rational world, as we did after victories in World War II and the Cold War.

Instead, the left has leveraged COVID-19 fears to call for a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill on top of the $1.9 trillion spent in March on welfare programs and now $4.1 trillion in public works programs; labor union protections; green new deal subsidies; Medicare and Medicaid and food stamps expansions; and bailouts of Amtrak, urban transit and schools. The public schools in many blue states were shut down for a year, yet taxpayers have to give the teachers unions $100 billion. Explain that one.................To Read More.....