Washington, DC…During the Trump Administration, Republicans passed one of the biggest tax cuts in American history and the greatest regulatory relief ever. The result was the biggest economic expansion in our lifetimes. Before the lockdown left took a wrecking ball to our economy, Americans were prospering with the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years – the lowest poverty rate in 60 years – and the fastest wage growth in 40 years. For the first time in decades, the income gap was narrowing.

Joe Biden and the Democrats have reversed these policies with reckless abandon. It is no coincidence that real wages for Americans have declined every single month since he took office.

History is crystal clear on this point: No country has ever taxed, spent and borrowed its way to prosperity – but many have done so to their ruin.

Brian Riedl tallied up the total cost of the Democrats’ new spending bills for the New York Post and estimates $8 trillion of new spending over the next ten years – about $60,000 per family. Joe Biden and the Democrats tell us this won’t cost you a penny. It will all be paid by somebody else.

Here is the dirty little secret of government spending: Government cannot put a dollar into the economy that it hasn’t first taken out of the same economy. Every dollar it gives you it must take from you and there are only three ways to do it: current taxes which rob you of your current purchasing power; borrowing, which robs you of your future purchasing power; or printing money, which robs you every time you go shopping by reducing the value you of your earnings, while it silently hollows out your savings and retirement funds.

And don’t fall for their lie that their taxes will only fall on businesses. Businesses don’t pay business taxes. YOU pay business taxes: as a consumer through higher prices; as an employee through lower wages; and as an investor through lower earnings. That’s your retirement fund.

You know they’re coming after working families — because they want to hire 87,000 new IRS agents. That is every man, woman and child living in Miami Beach, Florida. Or Ogden, Utah. Imagine the entire population of one of those cities unleashed to go after every taxpayer in America!

The Democrats’ so-called “American Families Plan” will require your bank to report every one of your private transactions over $600 to the IRS. Does that sound like they’re going after the Biden family? No, they’re coming after YOUR family. And if you’re typical, you already paid more in taxes last year than you paid for food, clothing, health care and entertainment combined. According to the Democrats, that’s not enough.

What else do you get for your $60,000 of new taxes, inflation and tax-driven price increases?

Amnesty, legal permanent residence and a fast track to citizenship for eight to ten million foreign nationals who illegally entered our country and are demanding to stay. Eight million is the entire population of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, South Dakota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Montana and Maine — combined. This at a time when real family earnings are declining, crime is increasing, homelessness is rampant, and mounting debt is killing the American dream of a better future for our children.

How are American workers helped by flooding the labor market with low-wage labor?

Of course, the woke ruling class makes out very well. The $60,000 taken from your earnings over the next decade will, for example, pay bonuses of up to $50,000 each for reporters and bloggers across the country who so shamelessly do the Democrats’ bidding. There are lavish handouts to ivy-league universities and the fashionable elite who buy $82,000 Teslas.

There’s even a new Civilian Climate Corps, presumably filled with officious little climate pioneers ever eager to report whose chimney is smoking, who’s watering their lawn on the wrong day and who’s spreading forbidden climate disinformation.

The fine point of it comes down to this: what makes the Democrats think that socialism will work any better here than everywhere else it’s been tried?

Congressman Tom McClintock represents California’s 4th Congressional District