One Big Thing Biden Will Leave Behind

 

The 1972 presidential election — which pitted incumbent President Richard Nixon against Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota — was an absolute wipeout.

Nixon won 49 of the 50 states, losing only Massachusetts

In Delaware that year, Nixon took 59.6% of the popular vote and McGovern took only 39.2%. But the incumbent Republican senator running for reelection there that year suffered a surprising defeat.

“President Nixon, a conservative, won handily in Delaware,” reported the Wilmington News Journal the day after that election. “Yet, Democrat Joseph R. Biden, a moderate-to-liberal Democrat, defeated the more conservative Sen. J. Caleb Boggs despite Boggs’ longevity in the Senate.”

Age was a key issue in this race between Boggs and Biden — with Biden running ads that suggested Boggs was too old and local newspapers celebrating the then-29-year-old Biden’s youth.

“Biden finally shifted into an oblique attack on Boggs’ age, 63, in a series of ads implying that Boggs would have been good for the job in the 1950s but Biden was more in tune with the ’70s,” the Wilmington Morning News reported the day after Biden defeated Boggs.

The Wilmington Evening Journal carried this headline that day: “State Elects The Youngest U.S. Senator.”

“Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr. squeaked past two-term Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs yesterday to become the nation’s youngest U.S. senator and score one of the nation’s biggest political upsets,” the paper reported.

“Biden, who will not be eligible for the Senate until he turns 30 on Nov. 20, upset Boggs by 2,986 votes,” the paper said.

Biden was sworn in as a senator on Jan. 3, 1973.

What was the federal government like when Biden started his career in federal office 51 years ago?

In fiscal 1974 — the first full fiscal year that Biden served in the Senate — the federal government took in $263.224 billion in taxes and spent $269.359 billion, running a deficit of $6.135 billion, according to data published by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Where did the federal government spend that $269.359 billion in fiscal 1974?

The largest spending category in that fiscal year when Biden was beginning his career in Washington was the Department of Defense — Military Programs. It consumed $77.864 billion in fiscal 1974

The second largest was the Social Security Administration, which spent $58.123 billion. The third largest was the Department of Treasury, which manages the federal debt and spent $35.369 billion. The fourth largest was the Department of Health and Human Services, which spent $28.062 billion.

As Biden approaches the end of his single term in the White House, we are now in fiscal year 2025 — more than half a century past the first full fiscal year of Biden’s time in the Senate. In that more-than-half a century, Biden has had some responsibility for federal spending except during the time when President Donald Trump had responsibility for signing federal spending bills. From January 1973 to January 2009, Biden served in the Senate. From January 2009 to January 2017, he served as vice president; and from January 2021 until now, he has served as president.

What was federal spending like in fiscal 2024, the last full year Biden has overseen?

Biden’s OMB estimates that the federal government collected approximately $5.0815 trillion in taxes in fiscal 2024 and spent approximately $6.9409 trillion, while running a deficit of approximately $1.8593 trillion.

The single largest spending category in fiscal 2024, according to the OMB estimates, was the Department of Health and Human Services, which spent approximately $1.6693 trillion. The second was the Social Security Administration, which spent approximately $1.5171 trillion. The third was the Department of the Treasury, which spent approximately $1.3456 trillion.

The OMB has also published a table that shows federal revenues, spending and deficits for every year going back to 1940 converted into constant fiscal year 2017 dollars. This table shows that in fiscal 1974, when Biden was serving his first full fiscal year in the Senate, the federal government spent approximately $1.2413 trillion in constant 2017 dollars. In fiscal 2024, it spent approximately $5.5876 trillion in constant 2017 dollars.

Thus, in this era when Biden has served all but four years in federal office, real federal spending has increased more than fourfold.

At the same time, according to the Congressional Research Service, the federal debt was $450.068 billion at the end of January 1973, the month Biden was sworn into the Senate. This Monday, according to the Treasury Department, it was $35.884 trillion.

When Biden released his last federal budget proposal in March, he declared his commitment to fiscal responsibility.

“Well, the budget I’m releasing today sends a clear message to the American people that we — what we value,” he said. “First, fiscal responsibility.”

“The first value,” he repeated, “is fiscal responsibility.”

History will not remember Biden that way.

Trump Gains Another Win With Arizona

 

On Wednesday evening, Decision Desk HQ officially called Arizona’s 11 electoral votes in favor of President Elect Donald Trump. The race was called just before 9pm EST on Wednesday evening, approximately 24 hours after the polls closed. Officials from the state had previously warned that it could take days or even weeks for the results to come in, especially due to Maricopa County. 

Decision Desk HQ projects Donald J. Trump wins the Presidential election in Arizona.#DecisionMade: 8:59 PM EDT

Follow live results here:https://t.co/i61IF3hUqp pic.twitter.com/9rWgy98yQg— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) November 7, 2024

While such a win was nevertheless expected given the polling trends, it still represents a flip from 2020, when President Joe Biden won the state. 

Trump addressed supporters early on Wednesday morning, referencing not only his win in Pennsylvania and thus the presidential election, but also that he was leading in states such as Michigan and Arizona. RealClearPolling had Trump leading Arizona by +2.8, making it one of his best battleground states. Nate Silver’s final forecast showed Trump winning by +2.4 in Arizona, though the poll trends had been favoring Harris for the past week. 

Trump has indeed won the state, though the U.S. Senate race out of Arizona has still not yet been called. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego is considered to have the edge in his race against Republican Kari Lake to see who will replace retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who switched from the Democratic Party to becoming an Independent in late 2022. That being said, Lake does look to potentially be closing the gap. 

With such a win, Trump has not only increased his electoral vote to 312 votes, and flipped a state from 2020, but he has won all seven swing states, thanks to wins in North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.

Harris Is Ending Her Campaign With Lies and Smears

 

In the last two weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris has been trying to revive her stagnant campaign by smearing former President Donald Trump as being Hitlerian and a fascist. She claims Trump is planning to put his enemies in encampments.

Yet in the modern era, it was not Trump who put large numbers of U.S. residents and citizens into “relocation camps,” but liberal Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt who sent Japanese-American citizens and residents into them.

If Harris refers to Trump’s supposed fascist policies during his prior four-year tenure, there is no such evidence.

Nonetheless, the once “joyful” Harris is ending her campaign by trafficking in lies and smears reminiscent of the Joe McCarthy era.

Recall that fascists hijack law enforcement and the military to suspend constitutional rights and punish enemies. But Trump did neither.

Instead, in 2016, a corrupt FBI went after Trump himself during the Obama administration with the bogus Steele dossier.

The FBI, which in 2016 had hired the faker Steele, in 2020, fused with social media to suppress accurate news reporting of the embarrassing Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

A number of FBI directors and intelligence officials—John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe—who openly sought to destroy Trump had a long history of either lying or feigning amnesia under oath.

Fascists try to warp the legal system. But Trump’s own Justice Department selected an independent special counsel to investigate the invented Russian collusion accusations against him.

In vast contrast, the Biden Justice Department coordinated with Georgia prosecutors Fani Willis and Nathan Wade, special counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, and New York Attorney General Letitia James to prosecute Trump, bankrupt him, and keep off the campaign trail.

Fascists use their governments to destroy their enemies.

During Trump’s term, for the first time in history, the House of Representatives impeached a first-term president twice. And in another first, the Senate tried Trump as a private citizen.

A self-styled “anonymous” federal official bragged openly of deliberately, and likely unlawfully, leading a bureaucratic cabal to sabotage Trump’s lawful executive orders.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, in collusion with other bureaucrats, deliberately leaked a classified presidential phone call in an effort to ensure that Trump was impeached.

Fascists seek to change existing laws to destroy opponents and illegally consolidate power.

Currently, it is only the Democrats who seek to pack the court, destroy the Electoral College, end the Senate filibuster, and create two new states and thus gain four left-wing senators.

In key states, they radically changed voting laws.

As a result, roughly 70% of voters in 2020 did not cast their ballots in person on Election Day—even as the traditional rejection rates for fraudulent ballots mysteriously dived amid the influx.

Fascists arbitrarily nullify any laws they feel do not aid their agendas. Biden-Harris destroyed immigration law in order to bring in more than 12 million illegal aliens and gain new constituencies.

They also protected sanctuary cities, as some 600 such jurisdictions illegally and with impunity nullified federal immigration laws in neo-Confederate fashion.

Fascists seek to politicize the military.

But in Trump’s case, his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, brazenly violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice by libeling Trump as a fascist.

Worse still, Milley sabotaged the chain of command by ordering theater commanders to report directly to him in times of serious crises.

And in near-treasonous fashion, Milley contacted his Chinese communist counterpart in the People’s Liberation Army to assure him that he would warn the Chinese military before carrying out any Trump order he felt existentially dangerous.

Some of the most prominent retired four-star military officers—again in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice—publicly smeared Trump as a coward, liar, fascist, Hitler-like, a Mussolini, a creator of Auschwitz-like death camps, and worthy of being removed “the sooner the better.”

Fascists seek to control and weaponize the media. So, Facebook and Twitter both conspired with the FBI to censure news accounts favorable to Trump. The major newspapers, social media corporations, television networks, and public broadcasting systematically and continually attacked Trump, censured his supporters, and fused with his opponents.

Why then the charges of Trump the fascist and Hitler reincarnation?

Simple. Harris’ personal negatives are rising, her polls inert. Her Marxist-Leninist-Maoist views.

She has abandoned her prior run-out-the-clock avoidance of the media, her smiley “joy” campaign, and instead now embraces the big lie, while President Joe Biden writes off Trump supporters as “garbage.”

Harris is now confirming to voters that she really can neither think nor speak well and has no consistent agenda that appeals to the middle class.

So, in final desperation, Harris is smearing Trump as a fascist, even though, ironically, he has been the target of fascist machinations from her own party and supporters for nearly a decade.

TB — The Silent Killer Crossing Our Border

 

Open borders allow deadly narcotics and criminal gangs to invade our country. But there’s a silent killer also making its way across the border: tuberculosis.

America’s woke public health authorities are more concerned with equity — redistributing health resources among racial groups — than with keeping a disease the U.S. once nearly eradicated from becoming a threat again.

Reported cases of TB shot up 34% from 2020 to 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and continue to rise. More than three quarters of the cases are foreign-born people who picked up the disease in their home countries or traveling through countries with high TB rates. The TB incidence rate is 60 times higher in Haiti than in the U.S.

In New York City — the No. 1 destination for migrants — the incidence of TB is two and a half times the national average and still rising.

A staggering 89% of TB patients in the Big Apple are foreign-born. The Flushing/Clearview areas of Queens, Sunset Park, Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan are the neighborhoods most affected. The single largest national group with reported TB cases is from China, according to the city’s most recent Annual Tuberculosis Summary.

TB is no laughing matter. Globally it has just overtaken COVID-19 as the biggest infectious disease killer on earth. There is no effective vaccine for it, but most cases — except severely drug-resistant ones — can be treated with antibiotics, provided they’re taken daily without interruption for several months or longer. Not easy.

Western Europe, Scandinavia and North America are all reporting rising TB rates as migrants from poorer countries — where TB is common — arrive. UK health authorities are alerting the public to the distinctive cough that comes with TB.

In Europe, public health authorities are engaged in a lively debate about how to affordably screen TB carriers and keep them from infecting the local population. Someone can carry latent TB for years, then suddenly, after resettling in a new country, develop active — and highly contagious — TB and spread it by coughing and sneezing.

But in the U.S., the mission-confused CDC is stressing health equity and rushing resources to the “disproportionately affected” groups. That’s fine, but how about also shielding Americans from the reemergence of a disease they’ve largely eliminated? In all the agency’s reports, not a word about what’s causing the surge in TB: an open border.

Immigrants who enter the country legally and apply for green cards are screened for TB with the interferon-gamma release assay test. Latent carriers are allowed into the country and referred to a local health department for follow-up treatment. It’s voluntary and hit-or-miss but better than no screening at all.

Migrants flooding across the border illegally or entering with Biden’s new parole app get no screening. Zip.

The CDC is MIA about screening and isolating the infected before they bring the disease to cities and towns across the country. The agency is forgetting its “Control and Prevention” mission.

Take the case of a Chinese migrant with active drug-resistant TB who crossed the border illegally in April. When her symptoms worsened and she was diagnosed on July 23 as “highly positive,” nothing was done to isolate her. Instead, she was shuffled between immigration processing facilities in California and Louisiana, exposing hundreds.

Now Louisiana is suing federal authorities to keep the exposed migrants detained until they are medically cleared. State Attorney General Liz Murrill warns about illegals who are “untested for diseases that can threaten the lives of Louisiana and American citizens.”

Thousands of unaccompanied minors with latent TB are being released into communities across the country, rather than being kept in Health and Human Services shelter facilities for the many months it would take to treat them with a course of antibiotics.

CDC data show a whopping 42% increase in incidence of TB among children ages 5-14 in one year.

On Nov. 1, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) demanded that Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas erect precautions against a disease invasion, warning that TB “is rapidly spreading through the millions of unscreened illegal immigrants released into the interior of the United States.”

The number of reported cases this year — just under 10,000 — is small but the trend is worrisome. The U.S. waged a war against TB in the 20th century and won. Americans shouldn’t have to surrender to this disease now because of open borders.