Posted on 04/24/2020 9:39:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
"War is the health of the state," wrote the progressive Randolph Bourne during the First World War, after which he succumbed to the Spanish flu.
America's war on the coronavirus pandemic promises to be no exception to the axiom. However long this war requires, the gargantuan state will almost surely emerge triumphant.
Currently, the major expenditures of the U.S. government, as well as a growing share of total federal spending, are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
None of these programs will be curtailed or reduced this year or next. And if the Democrats win in November, the nation will likely take a great leap forward - toward national health insurance.
Republicans are calling for a suspension until 2021 of payroll taxes used to finance Social Security and Medicare. While that would provide an economic stimulus, it would also blow a huge hole in federal revenue and further enlarge the deficit and national debt.
Even before the virus struck with full force in March, that deficit was projected at or near $1 trillion -- not only for fiscal year 2020 but for every year of the new decade.
The next major item of the budget is defense, considered untouchable to the Republican Party. Hence a confident prediction: This generation will never again see a budget deficit smaller than $1 trillion.
Indeed, the $2 trillion lately voted on to save businesses and keep paychecks going to workers will lift the deficit for 2020 above $3 trillion.
As of March 1, 2020, the nation was at full employment, with the lowest jobless rates among women and minorities in our history.
Less than two months later, 26 million Americans are out of work.
These workers will soon begin picking up unemployment checks, a new burden on the federal budget, to which will be added the cost of expanding food stamps, rent supplements and welfare payments.
Consider education.
Though Harvard, with its $41 billion endowment, was shamed into returning the $8.7 million in bailout money coming its way, does anyone believe the stream of U.S. revenue going into higher education will ever fall back to what it was before the pandemic?
As for that $1.5 trillion in student loan debt, is it more likely that vast sum will be paid back by those who incurred the debt, or that it will be piled atop the federal debt?
Congress has already voted to bail out our stressed hospitals.
Now, standing patiently in line for their bailouts, are the states -- and America's cities and counties. These governmental units are virtually all certain to face falling tax revenue and expanded social demands, leading to exploding deficits.
Their case: You bailed out the businesses and the hospitals. What about us? When does our turn come?
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, anticipating the mammoth bill for bailing out states and cities, has suggested that governments be allowed to use bankruptcy laws to write down and write off their debts.
Probably not going to happen.
Recall what happened when President Gerald Ford told New York City that Uncle Sam was not going to bail out the Big Apple. "Ford to City: Drop Dead!" was the famous headline splashed across the front page of the New York Daily News.
Ford recanted but did not recover. His perceived callousness in the face of New York City's crisis -- though that fiscal crisis was entirely of the city's own making -- factored into his defeat by Jimmy Carter.
Donald Trump is not going to give Red State governors facing gaping budget deficits because of the coronavirus crisis the wet mitten across the face. For his political future will be decided by those states.
Still, the cost of bailing them out promises to be enormous and to create a precedent for bailouts without end.
Then there is the clamor, already begun, from, and on behalf of, the Third World. The IMF, World Bank and the West, it is said, have a moral obligation to replace revenue shortfalls these nations are facing from lost remittances from their workers in the developed world.
There is talk of hundreds of billions of dollars in monetary transfers from the world's North to the world's South.
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist once famously declared: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
What is more likely to be drowned in that bathtub is the philosophy: "That government governs best which governs least."
What is more likely to be drowned in that bathtub is the philosophy that champions small government, the primacy of the private sector, a belief in "pay as you go," and that "balanced budgets" are the ideal.
Call it Robert Taft conservatism. Today, it appears irrelevant.
Indeed, the one certain victor in the coronavirus pandemic war will likely be Big Government. As John Donne wrote, "No winter shall abate this spring's increase."
Let me guess, Israel and the Jews?
The pandemic will pass by.
The economy will rise again.
But we've allowed a lot of tyranny and "emergency powers" because of the flu. The government closed churches. The government blocked freedom of association. This is the sort of bad politics that can stay with you for generations.
I quit looking for the point of his rambling years ago but like Joe Biden they keep leaving the relic of who he once was on display for all to see.
The Victor appears to be nationalism, with international organizations and para-national NGO power structures pulling back a bloody stump
“And if the Democrats win in November, the nation will likely take a great leap forward - toward national health insurance.”
What nation? We would not survive a Joe Biden presidency. He’d sit in some corner while Val jar and the Clinton Obama Bushes Ransack anything that is left of us.
Then their friends the Chinese will take over.
What are y’all anti Semite baiting for?
Little chip on the shoulders? y’all ...i mean really
This article is about how this Great Panic has fostered even more Big Government largesse which is true and along with being an avenue for people to show their usual worst traits that’s precisely what we’ve gotten from this
How anyone sees anti semitism in that I missed it...
I’m not oblivious to Covid..I’ve had two relatives die from it
My ex mother in law and my wwii vet uncle
88 and 94 respectively
I’m not the one obsessed with it, Pat is. Fuck that guy.
The government did the same thing in 1918. Closed the churches, cancelled events, etc.
Restrictions were gone the next year.
In an attempt to separate the messenger from the message -
Our nation is bankrupt.
We are hopelessly in debt with no plan to stop incurring debt or pay down our debt. This is the legacy “we” leave our nation and children.
I don’t have any faith that we will fix our finances. The end result will be a severe crash that will not only wreck our nation, but likely drag the world down with us as the reserve currency crashes.
I don’t want this to happen. I think it will be really bad when it happens. I don’t know if it will happen quickly like this pandemic or slowly through inflation, but I know it will happen.
What have we done to our children?
There are many who think we can correct this problem. In a rational world with moral and ethical leadership that despises debt and deficits that might be true. In a moral nation that recognizes we don’t have the money to pay for all of these entitlements and promises that might be true.
We do not live in that world. We have created a system where any politician who talks about this or tries to address our spending will be fired by the voters. Kick the can is not a sound economic plan to restore financial wellness in our own lives, but it is apparently okay for our politicians.
This is the way I see it and if I am wrong, tell me where. Our trajectory towards bankruptcy has increased velocity in an unprecedented fashion in the last two months and there is more debt promised in future bills and bailouts.
He is right about that. I wish he were not.
One thing, there is no doubt.
The USA and all other developed nations are racing towards bankruptcy at an accelerating rate.
88 and 94.... and you’re claiming they died of Covid? Contributing factor perhaps, or was it from being forced into a nursing home or hospital that is completely festering with germs?
I wouldn’t go near a Hospital or Nursing Home right now even if ordered to.
I'm not, but here goes:
It's always da Jooooooooos!
I'm mocking and baiting the people who see everything as being the Jooooooooos, not the Jews themselves.
(s) nully who used to work with a former Hitler Youth. A perfectly reasonable sounding guy unless WWII or Jews came up in conversation...
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist once famously declared: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
Stupid quote by Norquist, who should have realized he doesn't have what it takes to be funny and that people would forever think of him as some malevolent psycho who likes to drown small creatures in bathtubs.
Call it Robert Taft conservatism. Today, it appears irrelevant.
Taft wasn't as small government as his supporters believed. Like Reagan, he had an immunity to attacks from the right.
I suspect a Jubilee type of deal will solve the debt problem.
A reset if you will.
Another obvious hit piece on Trump by Buchanan.
Deep state operative.
In Buchanan’s day there was only the deep state. He never had a choice.
Well you outed yourself. No wonder you hate Trump. There was no anti-semitism. We need a troll purge.
Trolls all, the truth will out.
Bump
“I’m not the one obsessed with it, Pat is. Fuck that guy.”
I didn’t see anything about Jews in this article. Could you point it out?
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