Today, the White House released its 2021 budget proposal and, in keeping with tradition and the exceptions of the politically initiated, will be funded with a sum that the country does not actually have.
Fortunately for the Biden administration, the United States has not had a balance budget in a couple of decades. So while the amount proposed in this plan are staggeringly, sufficiently high.
The planned $8.3 trillion (with a T) are to be dispersed over the next 10 years for a number of programs and initiatives. $6 trillion of which is earmarked for 2022 alone, and only $300 billion marked for “new spending” – that is, spending that does not already fulfill existing fiscal obligations. For comparison, the federal government has not spent money at this rate since it fought in the Second World War over 80 years ago. Adjusted for inflation, of course. There is plenty of that.
The spending proposal is aimed at infrastructure projects, education, climate programs, and initiatives to curb gun violence. Though considering the nightmarish quagmire that is the road to approving a simple lane addition to a freeway, the dismal literacy rates in overly-funded districts, the nation-wide disposition toward 3rd-world pollution, and the apparent federal-level endorsement of relocating law enforcement funds, one is left to wonder where the money is actually going. Not that even half of the problems listed are the federal government’s prerogative to deal with in the first place.
Even less suppressing than the volume of money required and an array of vanity projects listed is the method by which this spending plan is, supposedly, to be paid for; taxing the rich. Those same rich who overwhelming supported the current administration. Right, no doubt they’re clambering to part with massive swaths of their wealth to pay for a plan that needs more than they can ever give. What’s more likely to happen is the continued practice of loop-hole exploitation and off-shoring. The funds can only be taken from another, much larger group of people after that.
Congress, while controlled by a thinning number of DNC representatives (as opposed to the largely unwilling GOP minority), is likely to approve the spending bill soon. Ensuring that the presses printing away the value of your savings whir on for the foreseeable future.
Hold on to your crypto.
