Magical Thinking to Pay for Harris’ Spending Plan

Kamala Harris took a few brief minutes on the campaign trail to answer a couple of questions from reporters, and flash her policy chops.

When asked how she is going to pay for her lavish spending plans, the vice president explained that it would be covered via those indispensable fiscal tools -- pixie dust and magical thinking.

The expansion of the child tax credit, which will cost $1.2 trillion? According to Harris, "the return on that investment, in terms of what that will do and what it will pay for, will be tremendous."

Tax credits generally, including a $150 billion expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit? "We know that there's a great return on investment."

Subsidies for home ownership, costing $200 billion? "When we increase homeownership in America, what that means in terms of increasing the tax base, not to mention your property tax base, and what that does to fund schools. Again, return on investment."

In general, the vice president opined, "I think it's a mistake for any person who talks about public policy to not critically evaluate how you measure the return on investment."

Because, she continued, "when you were strengthening neighborhoods, strengthening communities, and in particular the economy of those communities and investing in a broad-based economy, everybody benefits and it pays for itself in that way."

Clearly, someone mentioned "return on investment" to her in a policy briefing somewhere along the line, and the phrase stuck. Now, Harris thinks she's the Warren Buffett of deficit spending.

The concept of investment tends to be inapt in the context of government spending. In the private sector, when someone takes the risk of investing in a business or product and if it doesn't work, he or she pays the price. This ensures a measure of accountability and rigor that is lacking in government.

There's a reason that no one ever confuses the Department of Health and Human Services with Apple Inc.

That doesn't mean that some projects don't create real returns. By making New York the country's most commercially vibrant city, opening up the West to settlement and drastically reducing transportation costs, the Erie Canal was indeed a great investment.

Spending $330 billion during World War II to defeat the Axis powers and to make the United States the world's preeminent power was worth it by any measure.

These are the exceptions, though. There's been so much so-called investment by the federal government in general and the Biden administration in particular, it's a wonder that the budget hasn't already balanced itself. Instead, the deficit is nearly $2 trillion a year, and the debt is $34 trillion.

Where's the return? There is some, no doubt, but it is overwhelmed by the geyser of spending on every priority, from the Administration for Children and Families to the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.

Harris is proposing to layer on another $1.7 trillion in deficit spending.

It's not just that there will be no return to almost all of it, government intervention often has the opposite of its intended effect by driving up prices. There's a reason that health care, higher education and housing cost so much. Regardless, the answer from the likes of Kamala Harris is always more intervention. An element of her program is more subsidies "to help Americans afford health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace." Wasn't that what the ACA itself was supposed to do?

So, no, the Harris spending program won't pay for itself any more than the Biden program did, or for that matter, the Trump, Obama or Bush program did. Magical realism -- or magical unrealism -- in budgeting is an entrenched, bipartisan phenomenon in Washington. That's why we've gotten so much "investing" with so little return, except an ever-escalating debt and a series of worthless pledges about impending fiscal probity.

Like any huckster working in a boiler room, Harris is hoping to find people credulous enough to believe what's too good to be true.

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(Rich Lowry is on Twitter @RichLowry)