It’s easy to feel like we’re living in the twilight zone these days. Just look at the Biden Administration’s priorities. It is gleefully promoting woke over work, aliens over Americans, and entitlement over empowerment and entrepreneurship.
It makes little sense to so many. So why is Biden and his team doing this? On its face it appears payback and thanks to the radicals and the far left for supporting him this past November. It’s not outside the norms for a party to try to placate its supporters on the fringes. After all, Ronald Reagan gave the occasional speech on prayer in public schools, posting the Ten Commandments in buildings, and banning abortion, to name just three. The difference is Reagan, while recognizing those were important issues to his base, didn’t make those social issues cornerstones of his national policy strategy. His team remained laser focused on the priorities of cutting taxes across the board, reducing the size and scope of government, and rebuilding the military.
But what if first, Biden and his team actually believe destroying jobs and throwing thousands out of work from canceling the Keystone Pipeline is a good idea? Unionized blue-collar workers seemingly matter not to party elites. Second, what about opening the border to 25,000 or more migrants to cross during a global pandemic as sound policy? Some progressives even want to go further and demolish the entire southern border. Third, there’s the relentless drumbeat to pay people not to work by continuously promoting increased unemployment benefits, including a strange new variant that would allow anyone to refrain from work and still get paid simply by saying they have a fear of Covid.
Each of these Biden priorities could prove very unsafe, risky, and a bet against a robust future. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) summed up these peculiarities succinctly by noting, “If you’re going to claim you’re the party of the working class, you actually have to support working.”
Only liberals would continue advocating to keep an economy closed and locked down while simultaneously trying to get throngs of new people hooked on government benefits, almost akin to a drug. Their hope is voters will regularly ask for such benefits and appreciate and reward a party that gave them the goodies. After all, an economy that were to grow strongly again (think pre-pandemic) with the entire country working and providing for themselves leaves little room and need for Democrats and their “I’m here to give you something from the government” mindset.
Hard work and the entrepreneurial spirit of starting and running businesses have been hallmarks of this country for so long. The new Biden priorities run completely counter to over 200 years of economic history. It appears Biden and company are hellbent on pushing as many divisive and misguided policies forward as they can, perhaps fearing they’ll never get an opportunity like this again.
Democrats know the clock is ticking on their extremely narrow House majority and 50-50 split in the Senate. November 2022 cannot come soon enough for moderates and conservatives and indeed anyone who might have bought into the “unity” that Biden was selling in the campaign. For those with a case of buyer’s remorse, you need just wait a little over 20 months for a second bite of the apple on a new set priorities for America.
Jeff Szymanski works in political communications for AMAC, a senior benefits organization with nearly 2.4 million members.