President-elect Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue plan will bring total spending on the pandemic to about $5 trillion, destroy about 4 million jobs, and "stimulate Washington" and blue state governments, when eliminating the payroll tax for a year would have a much better and far less expensive effect, economist Stephen Moore warns in an opinion piece.
"We could completely eliminate for an entire year the 7.5% payroll taxes paid by every small business and taken out of every worker's paycheck," Moore, an economist for FreedomWorks, wrote for Fox News. "That would unleash millions of jobs. This would have virtually ZERO administrative and bureaucratic costs. Maybe that's why Washington pols don't want to do it."
The Biden "American Rescue Plan" includes "$350 billion for a blue state bailout, paid parental leave, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, $400 a week bonus unemployment checks, transit aid, paid leave of $1,400 a week, some $100 billion for school aid (for schools that have been shut down for almost a year!), 'health equity' grants, student debt relief and checks for illegal immigrants," writes Moore. "All that is missing is the Green New Deal. Does any of this have anything to do with a health emergency?"
He also pointed out that the Biden plan is "almost a replay" of the strategy he and President Barack Obama employed in 2009 with their $900 billion stimulus bill that "led to hundreds of thousands of fewer jobs than if we had done nothing."
Moore said that he and economist Casey Mulligan estimate the Biden plan would destroy jobs because "free money makes work less essential and — in many cases — less financially attractive than getting off the couch and working. That's some stimulus."
Further, Biden wants "another trillion-dollar" infrastructure bill, said Moore.
"Biden's proposals will lift the national debt to above $30 trillion and will likely speed America further along the track to bankruptcy, higher interest rates, higher inflation, and much higher taxes," said Moore. "Democrats defend themselves by arguing that Trump ran up the deficit to $27 trillion, so they have license to take our debt even higher into the stratosphere."