Joe Biden is running the most uncompromisingly left-wing presidency in history.
Some of us never thought we would see another president as far left as Barack Obama, but Biden fits the bill. The difference is that Obama sometimes would approve negotiations with Republicans. The man he usually chose to do the negotiating was Biden, who (for example) approved a key deal to keep annual appropriations in check. But Biden doesn’t have his own Biden to send, and obviously, he doesn’t want one.
Biden’s extreme leftism is manifest on matters across the board, but let’s just concentrate on fiscal policy.
With the federal government’s drop-dead date for debt default getting ever nearer, Biden refuses to meet and discuss Republican concerns and suggestions, much less actually start negotiating a deal. The recklessness of his brinkmanship is obscene. Biden himself says that failure to raise the debt limit “would be a disaster for the economy, internationally.” Yet he won’t even meet with duly elected Republicans, who comprise a House majority and control “the power of the purse,” to prevent it from happening.
Biden is not just putting the nation’s economy at risk but also thumbing his nose at the substantial majority of U.S. voters who chose Republican representation. He is doing so after already adding an astonishing $3.3 trillion to the national debt in just two years and proposing more than $14 trillion more in debt over the next decade. He is doing so despite proposing to raise taxes by $4.7 trillion and despite planning to cut defense spending to the lowest percentage of the whole economy in history.
Not even the increasingly parlous state of Social Security and Medicare can convince Biden to meet with Republicans. The trustees of those entitlement programs released their annual report on March 31, showing that Social Security will become insolvent by 2033, a year sooner than projected. Medicare is even worse: It is projected to go insolvent in 2031 under the optimistic scenario.
Fiscal and financial disaster is percolating. And this is already on top of the highest sustained inflation in more than 40 years, a situation even prominent Democratic economists say is largely attributable to Biden’s spending binges atop the earlier binge under President Donald Trump.
Biden’s spending addiction, combined with his obstinate refusal even to listen to Republicans, is grossly irresponsible. The public knows it. New polls show that 57% of the public, a whopping 12% jump from just a year ago, believe that “reducing the budget deficit” should be a “top priority” for the president and Congress.
Slightly more centrist Democrats already are balking at Biden’s radicalism, with Biden recently losing Democratic votes (and majority support in the Senate) on energy, investment rules and water regulations. And now, Politico reports that a group of the semi-centrists is defying Biden by “secretly crafting a fallback plan” to avoid debt default.
“None of us work for the White House,” Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) said. “We work for our constituents. And [Democratic leaders and Biden] should start talking and negotiating.”
Golden’s words are golden. Biden’s extremism is tarnishing his presidency and putting the whole U.S. economy at serious risk.
New Orleans native Quin Hillyer is a senior commentary writer and editor for the Washington Examiner, working from the Gulf Coast. This column originally appeared in the Examiner. He can be reached at Qhillyer@WashingtonExaminer.com. His other columns appear at www.washingtonexaminer.com/author/quin-hillyer.
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