After spending $6 trillion on social welfare and a Green New Deal spending spree and running our national debt up to $33 trillion, President Joe Biden is asking to whip out the federal credit card yet again for $100 billion more in military assistance for Ukraine and Israel and “humanitarian” aid.
Yes, it certainly is a dangerous world, and more so every day. But Biden has a lot of nerve proclaiming that he’s 100% committed to the defense of Ukraine and Israel when his own policies have contributed directly to the hostilities.
The most impactful way to repel our enemies — China, Russia, Middle East terrorists — is to defund them by producing every ounce of oil, gas and coal here at home. Biden’s war on American energy has cost the U.S. economy more than $200 billion in lost domestic energy output from the Trump pro-drilling trend. At least $40 billion of that has gone to the Iranians. You can buy a lot of rockets with that kind of money.
Meanwhile, the Russian war machine is almost entirely funded with petrodollars. They love that the heart of the Biden climate policy is to produce 3 million barrels a day less than we could and should be.
Biden misses a larger point about our national security. Right now, our debt is the nation’s most urgent, clear and present danger — not just to our economic prosperity but to our national security. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump believed rightly that when America is strong at home with an economy firing on all cylinders, we are strong, respected and feared abroad.
It’s painful to say, but right now, America is far weaker militarily and economically than we were four years ago. The most important geopolitical power today is economic and technological superiority.
You don’t achieve and retain that status by becoming the world’s premier debtor nation.
Americans are starting to feel in the pocketbook the corrosive effect of a hemorrhaging $6 trillion budget. Everything we buy is 17% more expensive as the government effectively prints and borrows money to pay its bills. Mortgage rates are surging, with a 30-year mortgage interest rate at 8%, up from 3% when since Trump left office.
This means that on an average-priced house with a 30-year mortgage, buyers will pay $1,500 a month more in payments. This will put homeownership out of reach for millions of Americans.
Then, there is the impact of skyrocketing federal interest payments on the debt. This year, for the first time, federal interest expenses exceed our entire national defense budget. With lower interest rate debt now turning over every day and having to be refinanced by issuing 5% and 6% Treasury bills, we’re facing a death spiral of red ink.
Borrowing more money now would make all these problems much worse and make America less of a superpower going forward. Republicans should be insisting on three conditions for any more debt spending packages.
First, it has to be much smaller — cut at least by half — than $100 billion. This isn’t Monopoly money we are talking about.
Second, any release of new funds must be accompanied by a pro-drilling strategy here at home to divert money away from our enemies.
And third, every penny must be paid for dollar-for-dollar with other spending cuts. This isn’t a heavy lift. We simply slash the $380 billion green energy slush fund and other wasteful programs.
If Biden and Congress don’t believe they can find and eliminate tens of billions of dollars of waste in the federal budget (about 1% of total spending), this is prima facie evidence that we need a new president and a new Congress.
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Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. His latest book is: “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Imperils Our Economy.”
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The most destructive and deadliest Enemy to the U.S.A. is the treasonous Democrat Party that’s objective is to destroy the U.S.A..
Most destructive and deadliest enemy, Hmm… probably our division and well-intended but erroneous selection of wrong decisions and backward leadership. These are trying times. We have to be careful.
AND bankrupt it in the process.
True freedom is never free, and America like Rome is falling because the fools that run things think that inflated overprinted money can replace the flow of the Red blood that as Jefferson warned must be used from time to time to water the very tree of liberty itself. Populating your military with foreign born illegals whose true loyalties lie with the enemy, or using foreign hired mercenaries to protect you while hordes of hungry Vandals enter your nation to be bought off, caused Rome to fall and will crater America in like manner. Debt may defund the American military, but foreign born ideas will and already has,,,,totally bankrupted this nation. With guys like Joe Biden running things, being white is no longer necessarily an option for being RIGHT. He like America has just forgot who he was born to be, and where his success came from. The greatest danger to American is from guys like Joe who become traitors to their gender, traitors to his church, traitors to their race, traitors to their party, their families and most of all to ultimately their country. When in doubt, cull them out. Unsound money is just an indication of the unsound criminal minds that create and control it. When the same home your grandfather built in 1955 for $17,000 now sells for $300,000, it’s not that the house went up in value, but that they killed America with the hidden criminally planned overspent tax of devaluing your dollar, a death by a thousand Democrat cuts.
OR who can’t figure out what gender they are, OR who break down in tears, because someone “Misgendered them”..
We owe each other. What we want to be certain of is we have enough fixed infrastructure and qualified personnel to care for each other moving forward.
Caring for each other is NOT self-government,,,,Individually caring for yourself to have surpluses avialble for others that cumulatively enriches the nation is what is to be desired, not just caring for others who care not nor respect themselves who chose to live not in the image of the great CREATOR but are proud to be called American CONSUMERS reflecting the great evil consumer of all.
Thomas. FOLKS IN this great nation were doing VERY WELL TAKING care of one another, TILL THE GOVT got involved, stuck its nose where it didn’t belong, and BUGGERED up things…
EVERYTHING the govt has got into, has gotten WORSE.. NOT Better..
Housing – THINGS cost more now, even WHEN you take inflation and COLA changes from yesteryear into account.
Schooling – we pay MORE PER KID now, to get DUMBER ONES graduating, than we did even just 10 years ago, let alone 50 years.
Health care – NEED I SAY MORE than the crapolium that was obama care?
…
I CHALLENGE you to name me ONE PROBLEM that the govt saw, and actually FIXED BY getting involved…
I watched Stephen Moore say the same things on “The National Desk” this morning. Amen! As he noted during the interview, there’s plenty of fat to cut out of the budget.