As I tuned in to watch the President’s address to the nation last night, I saw those words engraved on the wall behind him in the House chamber in which he spoke. I assume they are there to remind legislators of this basic tenet when considering legislation. Legislation should reflect Godly values.
I could not help but think about how much those words and their message are ignored these days. Although many of our laws do reflect Godly values, some laws completely ignore them. The latter of which are championed by a President whose views are shared by his Democratic party. Values shared by the media. Which could not praise last night’s speech enough. Mankind’s values over Godly values is how they view things today.
That was my initial reaction to Biden’s speech last night. Biden’s only mention of God was in the traditional way such speeches end by saying ‘God bless the United States of America’. (Or something close to that). That was not the case with Tim Scott, the Republican who responded to Biden’s address. He talked about how his Christian faith informed his views. The words ‘In God we trust’ mean something to him. Words the President seems to have forgotten. Biden is a religious Catholic whose values should inform him enough to not embrace values that contradict his church’s tenets.
Last night’s address basically reflected Biden’s desire to redistribute the wealth of this country through taxes in order to pay for all the free stuff he wants to give away. The programs he wants to implement are supported by the vast majority of the country. Who - after all - could be against getting free stuff ? ‘Whose gonna pay for it?’ ‘Who cares?! ...as long as it isn’t me’.
That was kind of Biden’s sales pitch. Claiming that only the wealthiest 1% of American taxpayers will have their taxes raised - makes it a no brainer to the other 99%. That is why there is so much public much support for his programs. But let us examine for moment who those wealthy taxpayers are. Who exactly will be paying for all this ‘free’ stuff. If you are earning over $400,000 per year pretax, it is you that will be paying for it.
$400,000 might sound like a lot of money. But if you are a family with 4 or 5 school age children (a typical family size among Orthodox Jews) and you send your children to religious schools - by the time you are done with taxes, paying full school tuition, the higher cost of kosher food, religious holiday expenses (e.g. Pesach food) and other living expenses (like medical and dental expenses, prescription medication costs, a variety of expensive insurance premiums, mortgage, utilities, car payments and maintenance costs, family vacations, and putting away money for retirement...) and you don’t have that much left over.
And if you have your life savings invested in the stock market, capital gains (selling them at a profit) will cost you more in taxes, too. Is it only the wealthy that have such investments? No. Over half the country does. including people like me that make a lot less than $400,000 per year. So much for that 1% figure.
I’m not saying that the programs he wants implement for free don’t have any value. They do. But just because something has value doesn’t mean we can afford them. Nor should taxes be raised to pay for them. Free college, child care, paid family leave all sound great. But not great enough to bankrupt the country.
What makes this particularly upsetting to me is that Biden is including all of those things as part of his 3 trillion dollar infrastructure plan. 3 trillion dollars ain’t chicken feed. And I’m not that sure that his tax plan to pay for it will succeed in any case. Raising corporate taxes will disincentivize large corporations from investment and production in goods and services; thereby increasing unemployment and reducing tax revenue while increasing government financial aid.
The idea that government jobs will be created by his plan sounds good until you realize that it is the government that will be paying their wages with non existent funds. These wages will be far greater than than tax revenue they produce. That is just basic common sense. Thus exploding both the deficit and the national debt. Much of which is held by China.
That is not to say I am opposed to repairing our infrastructure. I am 100% in favor of that. But that would not require a $3 trillion dollar investment that includes items that have zero to do with infrastructure. It would instead be about a $500 billion dollar investment. Which is what Republicans have proposed.
There is just so much of deficit the government can carry before the world starts losing confidence in the dollar. That can precipitate inflation. Which can easily spiral. In fact prices have already started going up. Has anyone noticed the price of gas lately?
Biden’s discussion of racism was well intended but short on details. And he said nothing about the rise in antisemitism.
Biden then spent about a minute discussing foreign policy. Which basically amounted to pulling our troops out of Afghanistan; ‘repairing’ our relationship with our European allies; dealing with our adversaries Russia and China; and dealing with threats from Iran and North Korea. Not that I am opposed to everything he said about them. But I am opposed to his approach to Iran. I was also disappointed that he did not mention a single word about our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel.
Another thing that bothered me was taking full credit for any progress we’ve made in fighting COVID. I will grant that he picked up the ball and ran with it. But in no way should he get full credit. When he came into office last January we had already produced the vaccine that will get us out of this mess. That was under Trump’s watch in a program called Operation Warp Speed. The Trump administration cut red tape that accelerated the development of a safe and effective vaccine in record time! Biden had nothing to do with that.
2 vaccines were already being distributed when Biden took office. That there were initial hitches in its distribution is a fact of life when trying to implement something as massive as vaccinating all Americans. That would have eventually gotten ironed out. That Trump had the wrong attitude about COVID protection was indeed a serious flaw that may have hurt us. But that does not detract one iota from the speed in which these safe and effective vaccines were developed. Biden just picked it up form there. I know the left loves to heap blame on everything the last President did nor give him credit for anything. But to ignore the good as though it doesn’t exist is to not give credit when it is well deserved and due.
Biden was once a centrist Democrat whose views were not that far apart from centrist Republicans. But he now seems to have embraced a socialist agenda.
Tim Scott is the quintessential American success story. He was raised in poverty by his grandparents after his parents divorced. He worked hard and rose above his humble beginnings to achieve great financial success - later to become a US senator. He spoke common sense to the American people last night. Not the socialist gobbledygook part of the speech Biden tried to sell as American values.
Now Scott is a man I could easily support for President, if he ever chose to run. I hope he does.
