Conservatives were mocked for warning that the 2020 presidential election was a choice between freedom on the one hand, and socialism on the other.
Even today, the White House insists that President Joe Biden is not a socialist, repeating the dismissals he made during the presidential election. “I beat the socialist,” he once said, referring to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
And yet here we are, with the Senate about to pass a massive $3.5 trillion spending bill, sponsored by Sanders himself.
The bill will radically change the structure of the U.S. and the relationship between citizen and state.
It proposes a “path to citizenship” for some illegal aliens. It will expand Medicare, in danger of going broke by 2024, to include younger people, and new services. It offers “free” pre-K child care and two years of community college. It will make permanent a monthly $300 child tax credit during the pandemic. It will push the U.S. to use 80% of its energy from “clean” sources by 2030.
And that is just the beginning.
Sanders proposes to pay for all of that by raising taxes on the wealthy — those who, Biden tells us, have failed to pay their “fair share.” Yet it will reduce taxes for wealthy property owners in Democrat-run states by easing the $10,000 limit on the state and local taxation (SALT) deduction.
And the burden of many of these changes, such as higher energy prices, will fall directly on the middle-class households that Biden and Sanders claim they are helping.
These are not incremental reforms. If passed, the $3.5 trillion spending bill will move the U.S. toward socialism — for good, since government benefits, once begun, are nearly impossible to end.
And potentially millions of illegal aliens who become citizens as a result of the bill will vote Democratic for decades, ensuring that the party retains a lock on power. It will weaken beyond repair the idea of individual achievement that has fueled American prosperity for generations.
Former conservative Max Boot wrote in May: “Biden isn’t pursuing socialism. He’s just trying to catch up with other wealthy democracies.”
But we don’t want to be like other wealthy democracies. Their wealth and their social welfare systems are partly illusory, shored up by U.S. defense spending, and accelerated by innovation that is based largely within the U.S., thanks to an economic system that, until recently, has rewarded risk-taking and hard work better than any other.
For all the praise lavished on socialized medicine, it was the private sector in the U.S., encouraged by President Donald Trump, that developed coronavirus vaccines rapidly. Canada’s health care system, to which the left compares the U.S. unfavorably, sputtered; Cuba’s system, beloved by apologists for communism, failed miserably.
The world’s best come here because we are not like “other wealthy democracies.” Nor should we be. With China ascendant, we are freedom’s last hope.
A 50-50 Senate should be producing bipartisan compromises, not radicalism — especially since Democrats actually lost seats in the House in 2020. They have no mandate for “revolutionary institutional changes,” a Sanders phrase that Biden began to borrow last year.
But Democrats are proposing to pass the bill by abusing the technical process of “reconciliation” — one of the worst names for anything in politics, since passing the Sanders bill will divide Americans, perhaps irreparably.
Why are they doing it? Because they can.
There is almost no pushback from the establishment media, which is dominated by the “progressive” left. Senate Republicans proved themselves to be an ineffectual opposition with the passage of a $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill earlier this week.
And while Democrats fear losing the House majority in 2022, they are being spurred by the radical “Squad” — elected to urban seats they cannot lose — to do what they can while they still have power.
Democrats are also carrying out a plan that has been in the works for decades.
In 2009, I exposed how a senior Democratic strategist, Robert Creamer, proposed a “democratization” of capital that would begin with universal health care. Once the public became used to radical changes, he reasoned, opposition would be broken. Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 nearly derailed that plan, but the “Resistance” — fueled by anti-Trump hysteria — and the pandemic rescued Creamer’s blueprint.
Other changes are in the works. There is legislation in both houses to expand the judiciary. Biden wants to reform voting to let Democrats control future elections. Public schools are indoctrinating kids with Critical Race Theory. And the southern border has effectively ceased to exist, as Democrats import future voters, coronavirus be damned.
This is what we warned you about. There is little left to stop it, other than the fact that these policies are doomed to fail.
By then, it may be too late.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.