In the middle of the night, your drunken father goes to the sugar bowl where you and your mother put your savings and takes out $1,000.
He plans to spend $400 on booze and waste the rest on various items. He spends the $400 on booze.
But on the way home from the bar, he forgets what he planned to do with the remaining $600 in his pocket and falls asleep on a park bench. He’s lucky; no one steals his money and when he gets home he still has the $600.
Should you feel happy or angry? My opinion is that you should be angry that he spent the $400, but happy that he didn’t spend the remaining $600.
Why am I asking this?
Because I thought of this analogy when I read Peter Suderman’s cleverly titled blog post:Biden’s legacy: He didn’t build it,” RodeJanuary 16, 2025.
Suderman lays out a number of massive spending programs that Biden has initiated along with a Democratic Congress. Although the money was approved, much of it has not yet been spent.
A key phrase:
According to PoliticsCongress has approved more than $1 trillion in spending for Biden’s major climate, clean energy and infrastructure programs, but more than half of that “has yet to be obligated or is not yet available for spending.”
The drunk dad didn’t spend it all.
That means, as Suderman writes:
Many of the major projects that have received subsidies or tax breaks under Biden are still essentially imaginary, and some may not happen at all, depending on what President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress want to pursue.
I’m like the kid who put the savings in the sugar bowl: I’m glad it wasn’t all spent.