Tipsheet

The Government Burned Through $7.5T Post-COVID and All It Got Was Historic Inflation

Spencer Brown
Spencer Brown  |  November 21, 2023 12:15 PM

Despite President Joe Biden and Democrats pretending not to know what caused inflation, the numbers still don't lie — and the numbers are staggering. In a new report on post-COVID spending passed by Congress, it's clearer than ever why prices surged to 40-year highs and continue to tick upward month after month despite the White House's false claims that inflation is "going down."

"The amount of additional spending resulting from legislation passed between March 2020 and December 2022 is astonishing," the report released by the Heritage Foundation explains of the taxpayer-funded spending binge that amounts to "more than $57,400 dollars per household." The total amount spent in just those few frenzied months: more than $7.4 trillion. 

Here are the numbers from Heritage:

  • March 2020 COVID Response – $2.22 trillion
  • American Rescue Plan – $1.9 trillion
  • Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – $1.2 trillion
  • December 2020 Stimulus Package – $932 billion
  • Inflation Reduction Act – $565 billion
  • PACT Act – $283 billion
  • Non-Defense Appropriations for FY's 2021, 2022, and 2023 – $172 billion
  • Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations – $113 billion
  • CHIPS Act – $79 billion
  • Total – $7.464 trillion

Democrats, however, don't bear the blame for this exclusively. As Heritage notes, "Members of Congress from both parties used COVID-19 to give up any pretense of fiscal responsibility and use deficit spending to enact a panoply of new programs" and all lawmakers "must" work to "return to responsible governance immediately." 

Already, however, significant economic damage has been done — something with which American families are all too familiar. Per Heritage Foundation's data, the average American household has "already lost on $7,000 to the inflation and interest rate spike largely caused by this spending spree" while employment has "stagnated" and "millions of workers are still missing from the labor force more than two years after the start of the pandemic."

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No American would be able to manage their finances in the way D.C. does, and no one should have supported reckless spending without understanding that those policies would have significant consequences. It's no wonder inflation continues to rise each month when Congress approved legislation that added more to the federal debt in just 27 months than was added in the first 200 years of America's existence, Heritage underscored in its report. 

Congress, instead of advancing policies to help Americans in the wake of the COVID pandemic, "exacerbated already mountainous long-term federal obligations and propelled the country close to a debt crisis."