Usually, the public likes getting welfare benefits from the government, if they think someone else will have to pay for it. But the public seems to realize that the Democrats’ proposed $3.5 trillion spending bill will come out of their own pocket, judging by its unpopularity. It will also wipe out many jobs and increase taxes and the national debt.
A CNN poll found only 41% of Americans support the bill, even when the bill is depicted as containing “social safety net” policies. And only 25% of Americans polled think the bill will benefit them. As Hot Air notes, that’s a remarkably small number:
25 percent is a meager result for a party that draws 50+ percent of the popular vote in national elections. It’s not just marginal Dems who believe the infrastructure package won’t benefit them much either. Per CNN, that cohort includes “several groups critical to Democratic electoral success, including independent women (59%), Black people (58%), those younger than age 35 (54%), Latino people (51%) and moderates (50%).”
The bill might become even less popular when voters learn about controversial provisions not spelled out in the CNN poll. As Townhall notes, the bill is chock full of left-wing provisions.”The sticker-shock of President Biden’s $3.5 trillion budget is bad enough. Unsurprisingly, the specific radical provisions within it are more cause for alarm.
Hot Air says that the bill contains a “whole lotta pain” for taxpayers, as well as politically extreme provisions:
Illegal aliens will be having a field day. Not only will they continue to be allowed to flood into the country largely unimpeded thanks to the Biden border crisis, but they will be immediately eligible for free college enrollment, student loans, and the child tax credit, effectively giving them a permanent guaranteed basic income…Keep one hand on your wallet because the bill imposes $2 trillion in tax hikes that will impact those making under $400,000 per year. Wait… didn’t Biden specifically promise that this wasn’t going to happen? Then again, he probably hasn’t read the bill himself. Or if he has, perhaps he just forgot.
The Republican Study Committee describes how the bill will cost thousands of Americans their jobs in sectors such as energy and daycare, while subjecting small businesses to crippling fines, providing welfare and entitlements for illegal immigrants, and penalizing marriage:
5. Forces faith–based child care providers out: The bill blocks the ability of many faith–based providers from participating in the childcare system and will lead to many of their closures (page 280).
6. Hurts small and in–home daycares: Requires pre–K staff to have a college degree. (page 303)…
9. Gives unions near–total control: The bill includes insane prohibitions that would bind employers’ hands in union disputes and dangerously tilt the balance of power, subjecting employers to penalties that exempt union bosses and officials… among other things this bill would prevent employers from permanently replacing striking workers (page 175). It coerces businesses to meet union boss demands by increasing Fair Labor Standards Act penalties by an astronomical 900% (page 168).
10. Makes unions bigger and more powerful: The bill would subsidize union dues that would only serve to strengthen the influence of union bosses and not American workers (page 2323).…
13. Drives up costs on Americans’ utility bills: Issues a punitive methane tax (page 367) and includes a tax on natural gas up to $1,500 per ton that could cost the American economy up to $9.1 billion and cost 90,000 Americans their jobs (page 368)….
18. Grants amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants: House Democrats have included in their reconciliation bill a plan to grant amnesty to around 8 million illegal immigrants at a cost of around $100 billion over ten years that would largely be spent on welfare and other entitlements (page 901).
Trillions more would be spent long term on their Social Security and Medicare….
37. Penalizes marriage: The bill would permanently double the EITC’s marriage penalty on childless worker benefits (page 2036).
President Biden has also proposed a record $6 trillion budget that “would push federal spending to its highest sustained levels since World War II” as a share of our economy, according to the New York Times. If adopted by Congress, it will result in skyrocketing levels of national debt, and persistently huge budget deficits. The Biden administration “forecasts deficits at more than $1 trillion for at least the next decade” if his budget plan is adopted, notes CNN.
By driving up the national debt to dangerous levels, the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion package is likely to shrink the size of our economy. Economists at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School says it could increase the national debt by as much as $1.75 trillion. “The existence of the debt saps the rest of the economy,” says the University of Pennsylvania’s Efraim Berkovich. “When the government is running budget deficits, the money that could have gone to productive investment is redirected.…You’re taking away from the capital that we need to grow our economy in the future.”
Past increases in spending by the Biden administration backfired and shrank our economy by reducing the size of America’s workforce. For example, economists had expected that the economy would add over a million jobs in April 2021, because it had been growing rapidly since fall 2020. But instead, after Congress passed Biden’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” in early March, employment grew by far less than expected, resulting in a shortfall of 700,000 jobs. That was partly due to work-disincentives contained in Biden’s plan.
