Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Democrats’ $3.5 Trillion Spending Plan Flunks Its Own Test

Pouring money into the same old defective social programs won’t make Americans more prosperous, more secure or less unequal.

September 16, 2021 at 12:30 PM UTC

By Michael R. Strain

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Not good enough.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

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With his $3.5 trillion spending proposal, President Joe Biden would move toward extending the government’s reach from cradle to grave. This is the wrong goal, but that’s not the only reason to oppose it. Even measured by the Democrats’ expectations for its achievements, it fails.

Instead of designing an innovative American version of the European-style social democracy that many Democrats admire, the plan pours money into flawed existing programs rather than fixing them. It creates unnecessary redundancies and fails to target assistance to those who need it most.