7 Ways the Bernie-Biden Budget Could Backfire on Americans

This $3.5 trillion Bernie-Biden Budget plan would bring us closer to Senator Sanders’s socialist utopia which will deliver misery, economic immobility, and financial ruin for families, small businesses, and our economy.

Congress is busy crafting what will likely be one of the biggest budgets in history. The Bernie-Biden Budget Plan promises to spend $3.5 trillion to remake our economy into the utopia that (democratic) socialists believe it should be.

We all want economic mobility for everyone, healthier lives, and greater freedom, but this plan won’t deliver any of those goals.

Instead, massive spending will accelerate inflation, discourage work, kill small private enterprises, rob us of flexible work opportunities, and empower federal bureaucrats with greater control over our children, our homes, and our choices.

7 ways that the Bernie-Biden Budget could backfire on Americans

These big-ticket items will trigger unintended consequences and negative outcomes:

1. Universal Pre-K for 3- and 4-year olds and creates new childcare benefits – Helping families pay for childcare seems like a good thing. However, the hundreds of millions of dollars that will be allocated would prioritize government-controlled centers over home-based and private care options which may be parents’ preferences. These options may continue to be crowded out. Also, it’s a matter of time before the problems with our public K-12 systems would trickle down to Pre-K centers. CRT anyone? (Read more: Two Truths and a Lie: The Return on Investment of Government’s Childcare Subsidies)
2. Permanently expanded child tax credits – This year, families are receiving monthly government payments from a beefed up child tax credit. These cash payments are unconnected to work requirements which disincentivizes people from working and gets more households dependent on public benefits from Washington. (Read more: Two Truths And A Lie: The Child Tax Credit)
3. Establishes a federal paid family and medical leave benefit – Workers want to have the time off they need to welcome a baby to the family or get well if they fall sick. A federal plan would crowd out more generous paid leave plans and flexible arrangements that most private sector workers already have. A one-size-fits-all paid leave plan will not meet the unique needs that workers have. In addition, it financially burdens small businesses that cannot afford the disruptions to their operations that this mandate would impose. (Learn more: ​​One-Size-Fits-All Federal Paid Leave Plan Won’t Work for America’s Diverse Workforce)
4. 2 Years of tuition-free community college – We want our young people to be the best and the brightest. Making community college tuition-free encourages colleges to keep raising prices and sticking taxpayers with the bill. Prioritizing community college also perpetuates the every-kid-to-college mindset that has undermined other successful paths to the middle class such as vocations and entrepreneurship. Learn more: Bernie’s “Free College” Plan is Really a Bailout For Universities
5. Medicare expansion – Expanding Medicare is one more step towards Medicare-for-All, which Americans do not want. It would expand government control of healthcare, jeopardize Medicare’s sustainability for current retirees, and worsen the program’s fiscal future. (Read more: Biden’s Slow Creep Toward Medicare-For-All)
6. Extreme climate change policies – Cleaner energy and a healthier environment will not be achieved by the radical command-and-control proposals on the table. These proposals aim to destroy reliable energy sources (natural gas and fossil fuels) to prioritize renewable energy sources that simply cannot sustain our national energy needs. The result will be lost jobs, greater dependence on foreign energy, and skyrocketing energy costs. Families–especially poor, elderly, and minorities–will see more of their budgets exhausted by rising gas prices. And these efforts will hardly make any impact on the climate. (Read more: Democrats Need to Get Real on Addressing Climate Change)
7. Amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants – America welcomes one million peole to the U.S. legally each year. However, hundreds of thousands of migrants have been crossing our southern border illegally each month this summer thanks to policy changes by the Biden administration. Liberals propose giving millions of immigrants living here illegally a pathway to citizenship, but they don’t want one penny for added border security. Amnesty will incentivize more people to enter illegally thereby perpetuating the problem, not solving it. (Read more: Democrats are Incentivixing Lawlessness by Proposing Amnesty)

In addition, we’re watching carefully that liberals do not try to roll back worker freedoms and flexibility by enacting facets of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.

This bill forces workers to fund union priorities and candidates even if they are not union members, attempts to increase worker unionization across the country, and could put millions of independent contractors out of work by forcing them to be reclassified as employees.

In addition, how will all of this spending be paid for? Democratic lawmakers are already promising tax increases on high earners, but for the amount of proposed spending, tax increases will likely be needed down the income scale. We will also hoist even more onto the debt burden of our children and grandchildren.

This $3.5 trillion Bernie-Biden Budget plan would bring us closer to Senator Sanders’ socialist utopia. Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried. It won’t deliver equality, opportunity, and relief, but misery, economic immobility, and financial ruin for families, small businesses, and our economy.

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This article was published on September 1, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from the Independent Women’s Forum