The Rubber Hits the Road on Capitol Hill

OK. So today Byron York reports that the Democratic cave begins on all the spending:

1. That they won't pass the $3.5 trillion "infrastructure" bill.
2. That they will pass the $1.1 trillion "infrastructure" bill.

Still to come:

1. Funding the government October 1
2. Increasing the debt limit.

Thus, York writes, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "has now surrendered to the so-called centrists in her party".

And this moments after President Biden and my own personal high-caste South Asian Congresscritter Pramila Jayapal claimed that the $3.5 trillion was free.

In a White House speech promoting his spending plans, Biden said that “the price tag is zero… on the national debt. We’re going to pay for everything we spend. [People say] ‘It started off at six trillion, now it’s 3.5 trillion’... it’s going to be zero.”

Well, I sent an email to Rep. Jayapal telling her that "my pal Goebbels" called the "zero" price tag the Big Lie.

Oh, I get it. Government is loot and plunder and when you win an election the rubes down on the farm expect to get paid.

And every progressive activist that wants to "make a difference" has come up with some glorious way to "bend the arc of history towards justice" with other peoples' money.

And every new handout is another block of the economy that is set in concrete and can never be reformed until the government runs out of other peoples' money.

So I get that every item in every spending bill is loot and plunder, including $3 billion for "tree equity."

But I still ponder the bigger question. 

Is Nancy Pelosi just playing the lefty rubes in her party? Letting them fly up a box canyon until they crash into the rock wall at the end? Or is she running from them, afraid that they will take away her power if she doesn't dance with them?

On the other hand she seems perfectly happy to sacrifice moderate members to the Greater Cause of passing new progressive legislation, as she did in 2010 with Obamacare and then lost 64 -- that's sixty-four -- members in the 2010 midterms.

Thing is: the ruling class can get together if it wants to. Example No. 1 is the federal debt after World War II. Here:

See how our ruling class all agreed to make the debt decrease as a percent of GDP. Right up until 1980. Know what happened then? Reagan said we are cutting taxes and cutting spending. But the Dems said: forget about cutting spending. So that ramped the debt from 35 percent GDP to 60 percent GDP. Then we had the Iraq War. And then we had the Crash of 2008. And now we've had the COVID Crisis. And we are back up to 135 percent GDP, higher than at the end of World War II.

Hello Nancy? Hello Chuck? Hello Joe Biden? Anybody there?

Because you know who will be hurt most if there is a wipe-out. The underclass; minorities; BIPOCs -- "women and minorities hardest hit." Your voters. Do you care?

I guess the truth is that no elected politician cares about anything except getting re-elected. And getting elected means dangling free stuff in front of the noses of the rubes. And that means running up huge Christmas Tree bills loaded with goodies.

But I wish it weren't so.