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Biden’s “don’t look at the cost” strategy

Biden’s “don’t look at the cost” strategy

In recent weeks, Democrats have implemented their “don’t look at the cost” strategy.  It is not some secret means to fool the American public.  No. No. No.  They are laying it out in full view.

Once the talking points were established by Democrat leaders, every left-wing talking head on television is saying the same thing – almost verbatim.  It goes like this.  “We should not be talking about the cost of the program, but the benefits to the public” – at least the alleged benefits that they are marketing.  Yes, that is what one Democrat leader after another is saying in those endless interviews that CNN and MSNBC provide exclusively for the progressive left.  

We should not be focusing on the cost?  Unless you are a millionaire … when have you had the luxury of making a significant purchase and NOT consider the cost?  It is not only unwise to spend willy-nilly without consideration to the price tag – and how you will pay for it – it is unnatural outside the Washington Beltway.

If I take the approach to spending that is being proffered by the Democrats in considering my possible need for a new car (my 12-year-ol- Chevy Impala is starting to show signs of aging), I would head right over to the Rolls Royce or Maserati dealers and start looking.

I would love to have all those verrry expensive features – cameras everywhere, heated seats, rosewood paneling, powerful engines and power everything.  If that is what I would like to have, why should I have to worry about the cost?  Why should I be denied just because my budget would not even afford a new car of any kind.

Of course, I could not buy that Rolls or Maserati no matter how much I wanted one of them – or both.

But what if someone else had told me that I could have any car I choose, and some generous uncle would pay for it? Well then, I do not have to worry about the cost.  That would be a great deal UNLESS …  unless that generous uncle was going to use money that he had been pilfering from my bank account over the years or would borrow from the bank account of people not even born yet.  It would not even be HIS money.

Yes, the Biden big effing deal “Build Back Better” plan has something for everyone.  According to salesman Biden, it has everything I ever needed.  It would solve virtually every problem on the face of the earth – with the possible exception of mosquitoes.

As a good salesman, Biden has us looking at all the bright shiny objects – pointing to everything we might desire, but never at the price tag.

In the most recent of his almost daily addresses to the nation, Biden did his best impression of notorious con man “Professor” Harold Hill in “The Music Man.”  Remember how musical instrument peddler Hill warned the folks that their perfectly normal young boys would be corrupted by the game of pool UNLESS … unless they bought a lot of musical instruments from him for a boys’ band. He did not focus on the cost because no price was too much to save the children of River City, Iowa from the clutches of Beelzebub.

In his two-part pitch, Biden first painted a dark picture of life in the United States – much darker than most citizens might recognize.  As Biden spoke, I could almost see those rotund billionaires in their shiny tuxedos laughing at the throngs of folks in bread lines and unemployment offices all across the land.

But thanks to Biden, there will be money to raise the kids.  Money to care for the elderly. High-paying jobs for the masses – union, of course.  Free college education. If I were to purchase an all-electric car, Biden would help pay for it.  In a feat of economic prestidigitation, Biden would give me all that and still cut my taxes and reduce inflation.  

He is also going to reduce gas prices, even though the federal government – and especially the White House – has little to no influence over the structure of international gas prices other than controlling supply in the United States.  And Biden has already instituted policies to shrink the supply – ergo increasing the price at the pump.

At one point in his speech, I saw the Professor Hill image morph into Moses – working miracles on a grand scale.  With his mighty White House staff, Biden would temper the winds of hurricanes, push back the floodwaters (been done already), and dose the fires that have been iconic on the west coast for millennia.   Like his biblical predecessor, Biden would mark the homes of the vaccinated so that the scourge of Covid would pass over.  Hmmmm.  Biden did not offer to end the mosquito plague.

All that for a mere $3.5 trillion dollars.  Seems like a bargain. 

Ooops!  I was not supposed to bring up the cost.  But now that the cost has popped into my mind – and I have come to my senses – there is a lot about Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan just does not seem right.  Could Biden be shoving a truckload of b*llsh*t?  (Sorry, but a softer word would not do justice to the scope of Biden’s dishonesty.)

First of all, he says his plan is “paid for.”  Of course, that is not true.  Not one cent is paid for.  Rather, he gives us his version of how it WILL BE paid for – or maybe might be paid for.

To understand why I do not believe for a nanosecond that it would be paid for if enacted into law, allow me to explain.  It is because virtually EVERY federal government program will produce higher costs than projected and result in less income than projected.  The shortfall will wind up on the National Debt.  It is the nature of government.

Biden “says” his plan will lower inflation even though the cost and structure of his plan is sure to increase inflation – literally taking away some of those economic benefits he promises up front. Claiming that his program would reduce inflation has no more validity than if he were to say he could defy the law of gravity.

Biden’s plan to end “child poverty” with billions of dollars to parents – many of whom do not need the money – will not ensure that any of the money is spent on the children.  Negligent parents could use the money on booze and cigarettes.

In the days when Biden was still talking about the price tag, he was also fibbing.  He said that his plan would put every qualified person through a state college for two years for about $150 million a year.  The real economists and accounting agencies put the price somewhere between $300 and $450 million.

Then there is the Biden tax plan.  The soak-it-to-the-rich-and-the-corporations plan.  Biden rails against the big job providers by saying that the corporations are “not paying their fair share.”  Of course not.  They never do. For the most part, they NEVER actually pay the taxes levied on them.  

When a corporation is taxed, the levy goes onto the books as a common expense – and is then passed onto the consumer in the price of goods and services.  You and I pay the tax – albeit indirectly.  It is essentially a regressive tax on the people because it hits the hardest on the poor.

Biden’s con game depends on a public who does not think it through.  If I only look at the promised “gifts” – and not the cost or who pays – it’s easy.  I will tell my congressman to support Biden’s plan.  BUT (and that is a BIG but), if you follow the dollars, you will discover that the source of the money is we the people.  And once the people understand that it is our money Biden is spending, his plan would be dead in the water.

So … the way Democrats get around that little problem is to kick the bill to future taxpayers who have no voice in the current situation.  It is taxation without representation.  Didn’t someone call that “tyranny?”

What Biden is offering is an economic opiate to hook the people on an all-powerful central government controlled by a political elite — aka the Democratic Party.  

Biden was correct when he said America is at a crossroads.  But he, the Democratic Party, and the political left are taking America down the wrong path with his “Build Back Broker” plan.

So, there ‘tis.

About The Author

Larry Horist

So, there ‘tis… The opinions, perspectives and analyses of businessman, conservative writer and political strategist Larry Horist. Larry has an extensive background in economics and public policy. For more than 40 years, he ran his own Chicago based consulting firm. His clients included such conservative icons as Steve Forbes and Milton Friedman. He has served as a consultant to the Nixon White House and travelled the country as a spokesman for President Reagan’s economic reforms. Larry professional emphasis has been on civil rights and education. He was consultant to both the Chicago and the Detroit boards of education, the Educational Choice Foundation, the Chicago Teachers Academy and the Chicago Academy for the Performing Arts. Larry has testified as an expert witness before numerous legislative bodies, including the U. S. Congress, and has lectured at colleges and universities, including Harvard, Northwestern and DePaul. He served as Executive Director of the City Club of Chicago, where he led a successful two-year campaign to save the historic Chicago Theatre from the wrecking ball. Larry has been a guest on hundreds of public affairs talk shows, and hosted his own program, “Chicago In Sight,” on WIND radio. An award-winning debater, his insightful and sometimes controversial commentaries have appeared on the editorial pages of newspapers across the nation. He is praised by audiences for his style, substance and sense of humor. Larry retired from his consulting business to devote his time to writing. His books include a humorous look at collecting, “The Acrapulators’ Guide”, and a more serious history of the Democratic Party’s role in de facto institutional racism, “Who Put Blacks in That PLACE? -- The Long Sad History of the Democratic Party’s Oppression of Black Americans ... to This Day”. Larry currently lives in Boca Raton, Florida.

6 Comments

  1. Dan Tyree

    He’s too damned stupid to consider the cost of anything

  2. frank stetson

    All that and you only included one number? All motherhood and apple pie.

    Until we see the price tag, the spending/planning period, the programs and prices, the rollout, and the expected ROI, we got nothing. We don’t even have a CBO assessment. Unlike you conservatives with your flowery verbiage and yuge words, I like numbers.

    Tax Foundation says you better find some upside, or reduce the clunker cost: https://taxfoundation.org/build-back-better-plan-reconciliation-bill-tax/

    The committee says a loser, but they lean right: https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-could-build-back-better-add-debt-update

    WAPO, which is looking at both plans, basically says what we all should say: it’s a big number, I would like more information. I would like to see a CBO assessment. Until then, rosy, positional statements like yours are somewhat meaningless, however well intended and whether or not we should use your sage advice in our personal endeavors. We should.

    Would love to actually know more about the plan, but then again….maybe not so much.

    • larry Horist

      You wrote: “Unlike you conservatives with your flowery verbiage and yuge words, I like numbers.” A nice self-complementing statement, but isn’t is the left saying to not look at the numbers. That is what Schumer says. That is what Pelosi says. That is what every Democrat member I saw being interviewed says. And as far as the unrevealed content … remember Pelosi once saying “”we have to pass the bill to see what is in it.” Actually, we conservatives ARE the numbers crunchers.

  3. Joseph S. Bruder

    It’s ironic that you state “Unless you are a millionaire … when have you had the luxury of making a significant purchase and NOT consider the cost?” You don’t even seem to realize that it’s the unfettered gifts from Republicans to the wealthy, the millionaires (or more often billionaires) that have the luxury to not consider the costs, that have made Biden’s spending necessary. Republicans have blocked spending on infrastructure, investment, jobs, social programs, even spending on R&D, for the last twenty years. Republican policies have drained wealth from the middle class, made the poor even poorer, and concentrated more wealth in the hands of a few. Now, when Biden proposes clawing some of the Republican gifts back and helping the common folk, you get all high and mighty about spending too much. Where was this outrage when Trump and McConnell passed the huge tax cuts for the wealthy?

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  5. frank stetson

    Well, it was your flowery verbiage above….. Just trying to ease your pain by saying “youse guys.”

    I agree. No one is talking numbers. I like numbers. I don’t think many Democrats do and none of them even knows what the meaning of Federal Reserve Excess Funds given the 2008 decision to pay interest on them. It’s only since 2008 when it was basically zero and now it’s up to over 4 Trillion of excess reserves which could change our economy overnight, not to mention costing taxpayers close to $50B a year for banks not to loan money. So if we told the banks to bank elsewhere, we could pay off the infrastructure bill before the infrastructure is finished.

    Meanwhile, on the BBB bill, 3.5T; Manchin drew his bottom line at 1.5T. That means there are only 20 numbers to pick from. 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, etc. If we throw out the top and bottom five, we go ten numbers to choose from. Answer won’t be anything else.

    Next, we got programs. They are defined, everyone who cares can read them. But now we need to prune and there are only three choices:
    – do less programs and kill some to make the budget
    – do less of each program to make the budget
    – do a bit of both of those strategies.

    Remember the famous Obama era “sequester” where either they used a Congressional scalpel to exorcise costs OR a flat rate would be applied to all budget items. Basically in a budget cut, that’s all you can do. One the other or a bit of both.

    OK, that’s the number and program dynamics, put on top 100 decision makers, two per state, each state with a different population and economy, each decision maker trying to leverage towards their state and make noise to help their re-election efforts which Bernie wisely said: “this is complex, this is not the Yankees meeting the Red Sox to make their decision in about nine innings. Then on top of that put the press trying to stir the pot minute by minute. And you got’s a real complex stew.

    I wish they would focus on the dollars because it you follow the money, you usually find the truth. And that’s all of us; those contribution, those reporting, and those, like us, just watching the show.

    Your “BIDEN’S “DON’T LOOK AT THE COST” STRATEGY” post didn’t look at the cost either; you printed two numbers and one was the age of your car. The rest was “motherhood and apple pie,” and flowery verbiage and yuge words.” Even had a “how I buy a car” budgeting analogy, always a winner. so there tis it.

  1. Joe Gilbertson: where are you going with these threats? My free speech is facing intimidation, sometimes physical threats. Is this…