Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives have no problem detailing how they want to spend $3 trillion in additional relief from the COVID-19 pandemic.
What they struggle with is explaining how the country will pay for it — so much so, that they don’t even seem to bother trying.
Still, it needs to be emphasized that almost all of this money would be borrowed, as was the $3 trillion Congress has already allocated to help individuals, businesses and states during this crisis.
It’s easy when talking about government spending to get lost in the zeroes. But $6 trillion would represent a trillion dollars more than the federal government spends in an entire year on everything it does — defense, transportation, social programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, everything.
It’s considered outrageous when Washington runs up a trillion-dollar deficit in a year. But the virus assistance is the equivalent of six years of outrageous deficits.
At some point, a lot of this borrowing will have to be paid back in either higher taxes or reduced benefits, as it’s doubtful the hoped-for economic rebound will cover it all.
So, looking a few years down the road, what taxes do the borrowers want to raise — or what benefits do they want to cut — in order to soften the present economic calamity that federal, state and local governments willfully engineered? Let’s hear a plan about that, too.
