President Joe Biden laid out the case that in order to beat China, the United States needs to be a little bit more like China.
According to Biden, we need a more heavy-handed industrial policy, we need to get children in government-run schools at a younger age. We need to shift higher education more toward government-run schooling. We need to expand federal control.
Biden even had the audacity to bash “trickle-down economics” in a speech calling on the federal government to subsidize green energy companies in the name of “jobs, jobs, jobs.”
It’s obvious what the White House was doing. It is laying out the case for a radically expanded role for the federal government in our lives. Every reporter in Washington excitedly chirped out the talking points: It’s a new New Deal! The era of big government is back! A coherent vision for a greater government role in our lives!
Thanks, but no thanks.
Over the last year, people have had quite enough government in their lives, thank you very much. We do not welcome more Biden, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, or Xavier Becerra. As the vaccines drive the pandemic into the dust, people want the weight of the state lifted off their shoulders. We know politicians and bureaucrats hope they can hang on to their power forever, just as the central planners in the World Wars hoped to hang on to their planning powers. But the dysfunction, the corruption, the hypocrisy, and the “noble lies” of state and federal coronavirus responses have not filled anyone with an appetite for more government.
Then, there is the obvious one: the cost. The federal government spent $6.55 trillion in 2020. Biden wants to increase that radically by many more trillions. He calls the spending “investments.” He calls it all “infrastructure.” What it is, is costly.
Biden doesn’t just want to spend big — he wants to increase federal spending as a share of the economy permanently. Given that federal tax revenue has never strayed from 15% to 20% of GDP, not even when the top rates were north of 70%, a much larger government means a government we cannot afford in the long run.
Of course, Biden calls for higher tax rates, but again, we know what that means. It never means increased revenue so much as it means increased demand for tax carve-outs, loopholes, and deductions. Higher tax rates mean companies orient their spending more around the tax code and less around hiring and expanding. Again, Biden is calling for more government control of the economy.
This is bad for freedom and bad for the economy. Biden’s economic advisers will not build up a stronger economy than the market would. His “American Jobs Act” actually will reduce jobs, according to top estimates. That’s fine for Biden. He’s more about redistributing jobs. When Biden said that his climate push is really about “jobs, jobs, jobs,” he meant that he wants to replace unsubsidized jobs with subsidized jobs.
Finally, we’re not ready to hand Biden more control over the economy because we know what his party does with economic power: It crushes political rivals and the culturally disfavored. An economy more directed by Biden’s Washington is an economy in which every corporation has to act as a left-wing cancel cop — or face the wrath of Kamala and Elizabeth Warren.
Half of the country doesn’t agree with Biden’s party on abortion, gender ideology, and guns. But with economic power, Biden’s party can still dominate those debates.
To defend all this government growth, Biden tries to make us afraid. He invokes the pandemic. He invokes China.
We agree China deserves a serious response. We don’t think that response should be imitation.
