I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday for a Hamburger Today

The editors’ of the Washington Post’s snap reaction to President Biden’s spending proposals resembles mine above:

Democrats worked to slash child poverty in their last coronavirus aid bill by expanding the child tax credit. Mr. Biden proposed keeping the expanded credit only until 2025, probably because making it permanent would be very expensive. Fighting child poverty should take precedence over free community college, and if Democrats expect to continue the expanded credit beyond 2025, they should budget for it now.

Even after limiting child tax-credit spending, the taxes the president proposed would not cover the whole cost of his plan over 10 years. In theory, tax hikes from his previously proposed infrastructure plan could fill the gap in later years, but only if Congress allows the programs with expiration dates to end and new tax increases to remain in place permanently. Moreover, it is unclear whether the amount Mr. Biden proposed spending on Wednesday would be enough to guarantee quality child care, paid leave and other promised benefits.

Mr. Biden pledged not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 per year. Meantime, the federal government is running huge deficits, even as new census numbers show that the United States is aging and population growth is slowing, which will strain already expensive federal old-age programs. Climate change, future recessions and other issues may require emergency spending on a scale policymakers cannot anticipate. Though many in Washington have set aside concerns about the debt, the nation is still entering uncharted fiscal territory.

Mr. Biden can keep his tax pledge or create a strong, sustainable federal safety net. He probably cannot do both.

while the reaction of the editors of the Wall Street Journal is even more pointed:

One question to ask is: Haven’t we tried this before? What is Head Start if not government pre-school education and child care? Weren’t school lunches and the Women, Infants and Children program supposed to prevent child hunger? Food stamps, welfare checks, child-care subsidies and a supplement to earned-income, plus public housing. Weren’t all of these programs and more from previous decades supposed to end poverty?

Why did the trillions of dollars spent on those programs fail? And if they didn’t work, why do we need more?

For the candid answer, listen to Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Democrat who explained the political calculation this week to the Washington Post: “Once everyone’s in, all the parents want in. Then it’s not a poor person’s program or a poverty program. It’s an education program. . . . That to me, that is essential. It changes the center of gravity once it’s for everybody.”

So much for the “safety net” to prevent poverty. This is now about mainlining benefits to middle-class families so they become addicted to government—and to the Democratic Party that has become the promoting agent of government.

Democrats are enamored of this principle of “universality” because it has worked to sustain the popularity of Social Security and Medicare, despite their failing finances. But those programs promise benefits in return for work across a lifetime. The Biden New Deal isn’t a deal at all. Most of its programs are free handouts on the model of the 1960s Great Society.

A limitation unmentioned by either is that the federal government does not have the authority to mandate two years of universal pre-school. It can make funds available contingent on such a mandate from the states but it cannot impose one itself.

As I said before I don’t object to education, health care, child care, or elder care but I do think that one year’s worth of spending on those things should be paid for with one year’s worth of taxes and if you don’t have the courage to do the latter, doing the former is not particularly virtuous. Both ends and means are important not just the benignity of your intentions.