Two Trillion dollars in revenues. Six trillion dollars in spending. This is madness.
This is how countries commit fiscal suicide: force the economy to shut down and then hand out government checks.
The problem, of course, is that government does not finance the economy. It is the economy that finances the government. And when you wantonly destroy millions of jobs by forcing small businesses to shutter, by cancelling construction and energy production across the country; when you flood the labor market with millions of illegal immigrants (all at a time when millions of Americans are out of work), you shut down the economy and you shut down the tax revenues that the economy produces and that the government spends.
And so we borrow instead. This budget requires $4 trillion in borrowing. From where will it borrow this $4 trillion? From the future earnings of YOUR family, of course.
Let’s add this up. There are 129 million households in the United States. FOUR Trillion dollars comes to $31,000 added to the debt of EVERY household in America at the average. This isn’t theoretical – that’s real money that WILL be repaid by every family through its future taxes, tax-driven price increases, lower wages and inflation. That’s the future for our families that the Democrats set in motion today while they promise to help us through these tough times with this sorry excuse for a budget resolution.
But it is not just our future that’s being robbed. That money must be repaid in the future, but it must be borrowed IN THE PRESENT from the same capital market that would otherwise be available to loan to consumers seeking to make consumer purchases (that drive 2/3 of our economic growth), or businesses seeking to recover, or to home buyers seeking to buy homes. That money will not be there for them because government has borrowed it instead.
Remember that government cannot put a single dollar INTO the economy that it has not first taken OUT of that same economy. If I take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul, it’s true that Paul has an extra dollar to spend. That’s what the Democrats are calling stimulus. But it is equally true that Peter now has one less dollar to spend in that same economy – which is why these stimulus schemes never work in the present and always diminish the future.
Our country is in desperate condition because of government mandated lockdowns that have failed to slow the spread of the Coronavirus while they have laid waste to our economy. There is only one relief measure that will rescue our nation from this dystopian nightmare: END THE LOCKDOWNS.
History is screaming this warning at us: Countries that bankrupt themselves and destroy their economies aren’t around very long.
Let that not be the epitaph of the United States of America.
House Floor Remarks, February 3, 2021