Mises Institute president Jeff Deist tells The Hill why the “stimulus” bailout is very bad for America in this excerpt from his op-ed:
The unasked question lurking underneath the Senate bill is this: How do we pay for it all? Congress doesn’t have $2 trillion to spend, and 2020 tax receipts won’t begin to cover the bill. This means the federal government will effectively “print” the money, likely in a circuitous way by issuing new Treasury debt and using the Federal Reserve Bank as a backstop to buy it all if investors won’t. And what sort of investor wants to loan Uncle Sam money for 10 years at less than 1 percent interest anyway?
At least Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is more honest: He thinks government simply should give Americans money every month, with or without a crisis. We now see plainly that congressional Republicans agree with him, at least conditionally. What a sad state of affairs.
If the bailout of 2008 had worked, U.S. companies would not need a bailout today. They would have thanked their lucky stars then, and focused on building healthier balance sheets with more cash and less debt. Let new owners, not American taxpayers, save them today.
