Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
President Biden is submitting to Congress a Coronavirus stimulus package estimated at $1.9 trillion. Depending upon how you count, this would be the third or the fourth stimulus bill since the pandemic broke out about a year ago. I don’t know about you, but to me, these are outrageous numbers, and it’s almost impossible the figure out how the money is going to be spent.
Before this bill becomes law and we go another $1.9 trillion in debt, I decided to try and figure out where the money was going and if the projections were realistic. Let’s start with supporting public schools. According to the National Center for Education Studies (NCSE), the latest numbers they have is for the school year 2016-2017. That report showed total expenditures of $739 billion was spent on education. If we look at the three stimulus bills, the federal government wants to send to the states $225 billion. That’s an amount equal to almost one-third of the public school system’s operating budgets in 2017. Most of the public schools in the United States are funded by real estate taxes; a smaller amount of money comes from the state Department of Education, and an even smaller amount comes from the federal government under normal circumstances. School funding is very stable even during a pandemic; even with the great recession under the Obama administration, school funding was still very stable.
With a significant decline of interest rates in the United States, long-term fixed-rate mortgages can be acquired for as little as 2 ½%. These low mortgage rates have caused both a refinancing boom and increased property sales. More and more people can qualify for a mortgage at these interest rates, but property values are increasing. We don’t have the price change for the entire year, but as of July 2020, prices on average were up 5.5%. As houses are sold at higher prices, reappraisals increase the new owners’ real estate taxes, and therefore funding to the schools will go up. The bottom line is that the stimulus packages will be used in an amount equal to an excess of 30% of the entire school budget. We don’t have any detail yet how the money will be spent in the schools.
The University of Pennsylvania Wharton school’s Richard Prisinzano says after reviewing the Biden stimulus plan that $415 billion is going toward bolstering the countries COVID-19 plan. Let’s look at the numbers. We have 327 million people in the United States, and we know that the two shot vaccine by either Pfizer or Moderna cost a total of $39 for the two doses. According to the US ChildStats.gov, children ages 0 to 17 years total 74 million in America. Currently, these children are not in line to get the vaccination. That leaves us with 253 million people who need vaccinations. If every one of those people got a vaccination, the vaccine’s total cost would be $10.120 billion. What I want to know is, what is the other $405 billion going to be spent on? I know we’re going to have to pay transportation costs, pay somebody to give the shots, bureaucrats to supervise, and facilities to be rented. But if I tripled the cost to $30 billion, I still want to know, and I hope you would like to know, where the other $385 billion is going? We know it’s not going to the schools because that is a separate item. The best I can account for out of the $1.9 trillion is about $700 billion. According to the Tax Foundation, approximately 78,000,000 households would qualify for the $1,400 stimulus payment. Of the remaining $385 billion, $109 billion would fund the $1400 stimulus. If, between married and single households, we had 117 million people eligible for the $1400, that would mean we will pay out $163 billion of the $385 billion. The question is, where does the remaining $268 billion go? We need to know where our money is going and how much of it will go directly for COVID-19 relief and how much to pork? We actually need to address that question about the entire bill.
You can write to your senator or congressman and ask him or her where the money is going and what is being spent in the $1.9 Trillion is for COVID-19 relief. In the past, we would have looked at these appropriations as taxpayer money, that’s not true anymore and hasn’t been true for many years. When the government cannot run on a balanced budget, it borrows money to pay its bills. According to the United States Congressional Accounting Office, government debt increased in 2020 by $3.7 trillion. And if we pass President Biden’s stimulus, we will add another 1.9 trillion dollars to start off 2021. I firmly believe that President Biden will come back for more COVID-19 stimulus bills in 2021.
If the taxpayers are not paying enough income to the treasury to balance the budget, then all shortfall is covered by borrowings, almost $21 trillion to date, debts that originally were intended to be paid back. The current outstanding debt of the United States is equal to or greater than 100% of all the goods and services produced in the United States. We have reached the point where our desire to pay off the debt is no longer a desire. The Democrats are under the misconception that we can fund the budget by merely increasing the taxes on the rich. This has always been a flawed assumption. People will not remain static when their taxes go to unacceptable levels. They will move or they will leave the country or state and take their money with them. This moving out is happening right now in California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and other high income or property tax states.
The best we can hope to do it’s become more fiscally responsible and try to slow the increase in the deficit. The next time you hear somebody talk about the Biden $1.9 trillion stimulus, ask this question, “How much money will be spent on vaccines out of $1.9 trillion?” When they don’t know, you give them the answer and ask a question. If everybody who could get a shot, gets one, it will cost $10 billion. Take them quickly through the math and then ask, where is the rest of the $1.8 trillion being spent?
Dan Perkins is a published author of 4 novels on nuclear and biological terrorism against the United States and is a current events commentator for over 20+ news blogs. He recently has had commentaries posted on Medium, Conservative Truth, and Newsmax among others. He appears on radio and TV regularly many times a month. Dan’s newest show is called “America’s Cannabis Conversation,” on the W420radionetwork.com. His latest entrance in communications is his first Podcast called “What’s on My Mind?” This can be heard on SoundCloud; just look for the name of the show or Dan Perkins. More information on Perkins can be found on his web site: danperkins.guru
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