In a country that already runs large deficits they are proposing more handouts and even more spending without a realistic way of paying for it.
The fear of deficits and the debt is entirely a manufactured response from an econ illiterate voting populace that serves both neoliberal parties. It primarily stems from the assumption that the monopoly issuer of the currency functions anything like our household budget process. By simply not offering any pushback to that assumption that was the driving factor in Reagan’s campaigns in the ’80s the Democratic party left their base in labor and dedicated itself to the deep pocket donors and their agenda.
No one ever asks why the federal government has any need to “borrow” its own currency back, or if that is even possible. Hint: It isn’t without first creating the currency to be borrowed. One cannot borrow what doesn’t yet exist and deficit spending by the federal government is the only source of the money necessary to purchase bonds from the Treasury. Bonds are just another form of currency that pays interest, an asset swap with cash reserves, not a debt anyone has to, or even can, pay off. It is a very common error because it resonates so well with everything we learned about money as “users” of the currency, and it is the main roadblock to us having nice things like other countries have, such as free healthcare and a 21st-century infrastructure.
If Treasury debt, which we’ve had continuously for over one hundred and fifty years, is such a problem that it lights everyone’s hair on fire then we should set interest permanently at zero at the Fed and just stop issuing them for any reason. They never did “fund” anything except welfare for banks and the wealthy. Our Constitution mandates that Congress use its monopoly patent on the US dollar to spend “for the common welfare”, but it has delegated its responsibility to the Fed and banking system.
Congress must spend before it can collect taxes or borrow, which shows that the dollar is self-funding and that “finding money” is not a part of the funding process. Tell Congress to do its job and use the budget to manage the economy with a target of full employment instead of using the economy to manage the budget with the goal of balance. A balanced budget is a 100% tax rate that claws back all payments to the private sector, effectively stealing the resources it uses and leaves nothing as a store of value for commerce or to retire private sector bank debt.
