Increasing inflation to fight inflation?
My wife just came back from a routine grocery store run. She said, “These people are destroying the country.” She wasn’t talking about the store — she was talking about our elite political class that are spending our country into high inflation. And now they are poised to spend even more.
They have just passed a bill touted as something to “reduce inflation,” but critics note it could only increase it.
These days, you can tell that whenever the left wants to deceive their way into passing a bill, they provide an Orwellian name for the exact opposite effect.
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This inflation-promoting bill is labeled “the Inflation Reduction Act.” Obamacare, which has proved quite unaffordable for many, was passed as “the Affordable Care Act.” The left tried to pass the “For the People Act,” which would have unconstitutionally taken election control from the states (where the Constitution puts it) and benefitted the politicians already in office.
This new $750 billion bill delivers a wish come true for those who believe that man’s activities can control the weather — in other words, our activities exacerbate climate change.
An article in Breitbart.com notes, “Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) detailed the 50 most radical policies in the Inflation Reduction Act.” It is a wish list for every leftwing scheme imaginable, including funding abortion at taxpayers expense. But it will not do what it is touted to do — reduce inflation.
The article adds, “Banks emphasized that the legislation would not reinvigorate the economy, as the Penn Wharton Budget Model found that the bill would not curb inflation. ‘That’s reason enough to vote against the package,’ Banks remarked.”
Where does all the money for the new spending come from? From “we the people.” Government has no money of its own. It confiscates it from we the people.
The Gateway Pundit reports: “The majority of new revenue from IRS audits and scrutiny will come from those making less than $200,000 a year, according to a study from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.”
Furthermore, Ted Cruz notes that this bill will expand the IRS by 87,000 new agents. He adds, “The Democrats are making the IRS bigger than the Pentagon, plus the Department of State, plus the FBI, plus the Border Patrol combined. This is a massive power grab.”
In his 2021 book, Beyond Biden, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich explains how there really is an American majority that is not being represented by the left today. For example, Gingrich said that 75% of Americas support income tax cuts, not increases.
The founders of America believed in sound fiscal policy.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, ‘the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, & the fruits acquired by it.’”
As to government debt, Jefferson once noted: “I, however, place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. we see in England the consequences of the want of it: their laborers reduced to live on a penny in the shilling of their earnings, to give up bread, & resort to oatmeal & potatoes for food; and their landholders exiling themselves to live in penury and obscurity abroad, because at home the government must have all the clear profits of their land.”
I remember hearing President Ronald Reagan say in 1984 that Congress was spending money like drunken sailors. Then he added that he must apologize to the Navy men because at least the sailors were spending their own money. How much worse in 2022.
When you have debt that gets into the trillions of dollars, then the situation is totally out of control. Somebody once gave this illustration to help grasp how much a trillion is, say, in comparison with a million:
- If I owed you $100 and said I’d pay you in a million seconds, when would I pay you? In 12 days.
- If I owed you $100 and said I’d pay you in a billion seconds, when would I pay you? In 32 years.
- If I owed you $100 and said I’d pay you in a trillion seconds, when would I pay you? In 32,000 years.
Reagan once quipped that the closest thing to eternal life on this earth is a government program. Yet this “Reduce Inflation Act” will add more government programs. So the chance of stopping all the reckless government spending is an uphill battle. But it’s a battle worth fighting — for the sake of our country and our children and children’s children.
Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an outreach of D. James Kennedy Ministries, where Jerry also serves as senior producer and an on-air host. He has written/co-written 33 books, including George Washington’s Sacred Fire (with Providence Forum founder Peter Lillback, Ph.D.) and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (with D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.). www.djkm.org? @newcombejerry www.jerrynewcombe.com
