Watching the wilted, bitter fruits of the Biden Administration’s senile stabs at domestic and foreign policy, an old “Saturday Night Live” skit comes to mind.
Given his experiences growing up in the Chicago environs, John Belushi created The Olympia Restaurant, which was said to be loosely based upon The Billy Goat Tavern. In the skit, an Eastern European family runs a diner with a very limited menu. No matter what a customer orders, Belushi would brusquely inform them that their only option was a cheeseburger. They served “No fries. Chips.” As for a beverage, they offered “No Coke. Pepsi.”
During the 1960s, the American economy hummed and the Vietnam War raged. Thrust into office in the wake of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson and his Democratic congressional majority both escalated the conflict and launched the “Great Society.” Over time, during this “Guns and Butter” epoch of Democratic rule, American lives and treasure were lost in the jungles of Vietnam; while here at home, trillions were spent to “end poverty,” amongst a host of other societal ills. The end result was recession and retreat during a monstrous American hangover called “the 1970s.”
Today, though many of the programs continue, most objective observers view the Great Society’s outcome as anything but great. Nevertheless, as history is largely written by the Left, this “Guns and Butter” era gets an A for effort on the latter (though decidedly not so for the former).
It is odd, then, that the Biden Administration is intent upon recreating this rotten epoch of Democratic rule. For though inflation continues to ravage Americans’ pocketbooks and attempts to pursue happiness, the Biden Administration and congressional Democrats continue to spend money like sailors on a bender with a stolen credit card. [If any drunken sailor reading this takes umbrage, I don’t blame you.]
First, despite our dire economic straits andr increased wariness, if not outright isolationism, regarding foreign interventions, in May the Biden Administration and its lackey Democratic Congress (with some GOP support) passed a $40 billion military aid package to Ukraine. Recently, the Biden Administration released another “$270 million in military aid to Ukraine, including four more high-mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS), bringing the number sent to 20.”
It remains to be seen when, if ever, the supporters of this military aid package considered the ramifications of so patently expressing their intention and ability to facilitate killing the military personnel of the country holding the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal; or if these supporters calculated the domestic inflationary ramifications of this military aid package. Would it have mattered if they had?
Enter, groveling from stage Left, the senator with the political spine of an amoeba, Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who teetered and tottered and caved to his left-wing puppet masters. Manchin agreed to a “scaled back” version of the Democrats’ budget-busting, inflation boosting spending bill.
According to Schumer’s and Manchin’s offices, the bill will raise $739 billion in revenue through IRS tax enforcement, the corporate minimum tax and closing the carried interest loophole. It will spend $433 billion total, they said, on energy and climate change provisions and on the ACA extension.
Yes, only in the swamp would a massive increase in spending and taxes be called “scaled back.” Only in the miasmatic rats’ nest would the climate cult’s boondoggle demands be prioritized over the outcries of the vast majority of hardworking Americans for relief from inflation. And only in that Orwellian cesspool of iniquity would anyone have the unmitigated gall to call this steaming pile of wasteful, harmful, inflationary government spending, “The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.”
The likely silver lining of Biden’s and his lackey Democratic Congress’ spendthrift spree was provided by a centrist economist of my acquaintance: “The bill won’t end inflation; but it will end the Democratic majority.” True enough, for the proof will be in the pudding. When the bill that is claimed to end inflation actually accelerates it and plunges the American people deeper into a recession, no lame attempts by the Biden Administration and their complicit media will deflect or deter the American people’s ire at these failed leftist policies.
Biden and his lackey Democrats staffing Joe’s Olympia Restaurant persistently dismiss Americans’ pleas for prosperity and peace and, instead, offer “no butter. Guns.” Time for the voters to close it down for repeated public health violations.