Biden’s Budget Dims His One Shining Moment
Biden punched Vladimir Putin out and then the whole world came crashing down on the president’s head. Really?
As a critic of President Biden, I just want to say that I thought his ad-lib statement in Poland, when he said that “we will have a different future — a brighter future rooted in democracy and principle; hope and light, for god’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” was a good statement.
Ad-lib or not, the whole world’s ganging up on him. I frankly think it’s the best single sentence of his presidency.
In today’s budget presser, the president said, it wasn’t a policy change that he was expressing but his moral outrage — a personal feeling that I’m okay with, too. At least for one brief, fleeting moment Mr. Biden punched Vladimir Putin out. And then the whole world came crashing down on Mr. Biden’s head. Really?
Aren’t we tired of being intimidated by Vladimir Putin? He is a war criminal and a crook. I’d love to see Mr. Biden call him a war criminal and a crook in the same sentence.
I’d love to see Mr. Biden seize Mr. Putin’s $700 million yacht — which of course he got by giving up smoking for a couple of months and putting it into a little tin box.
The reality is Mr. Putin has been stealing money from Russian working people for three decades, to the tune of a couple of hundred billion dollars, and Joe Biden should be calling him out on that and pushing a narrative about Vladimir Putin the crook. But I am glad at least for one shining moment Mr. Biden hit him.
I’ll bet if you took a poll, the vast majority of Americans, like 80 or 90 percent plus, would favor regime change in Russia. In fact, when Senator Graham called for Mr. Putin’s assassination I’ll bet you a strong silent majority of Americans totally agreed.
The trouble with President Biden’s European journey, however, is that his press conference in Brussels was terrible. He did not hit Vladimir Putin. He did not call for secondary sanctions. He did not sanction Russian energy. He did not support the Soviet MiGs in Poland being transferred to Ukraine or the s-300s from Slovakia being sent to Ukraine. He did not conclusively reverse his war on American fossil fuels.
Mr. Biden did make a bunch of bizarre statements that deterrence was never meant to work, that we would respond in kind to any Russian bio-chemical WMDs, that our troops were going to go into Ukraine. These statements were bewildering and incoherent. That whole presser reeked of weakness rather than strength.
What’s more, President Biden has never stated a goal of Ukrainian victory in their country. Talk is even spreading that the U.S. is pushing President Zelensky to make a peace deal with Mr. Putin. So in all these areas Mr. Biden speaks with a forked tongue.
Then there’s the Biden budget. We have a few details, but not all of them yet. I just want to say: What fun it was to listen to the president tell us that he’s really a capitalist but he wants successful individuals and corporations to pay their fair share because we all know how mean, nasty, and greedy they are.
Of course, the president loves to talk about job growth, which don’t forget he inherited from President Trump’s V-shaped recovery. Yet while he loves employment, Mr. Biden just doesn’t like employers. He’s never figured out that you can’t have plentiful good-paying jobs unless you have successful, profitable companies. But he is a capitalist, remember?
Plus, there he goes again, with his confiscatory wealth tax on unrealized capital gains, which even the European socialists tried, failed, and ultimately vetoed.
Plus, even as the emergency pandemic spending runs down, his budget still shows a spending to GDP ratio of 23-24 percent, which is historically high — aka, big-government socialism. Debt held by the public as a share of GDP stays around 103-105 percent. More big-government socialism.
The green new deal is well financed, with a 30 percent spending hike for the EPA and a 15 percent jump for the energy department. Meanwhile there’s way less than inflation for the DHS and its illegal immigration security, and a military increase that barely keeps up with inflation. We will have more on this as we process the incoming information.
Let me just add: Save America. Kill the Bill.
From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.