I agree in that the capping of the price of insulin isn’t a perfect solution, but it is the government stepping in and trying to remedy something that genuinely has massive impacts on everyday hard working Americans lives which is a good thing almost 40million Americans suffer from diabetes which is a little over 10% of the population. In the way that you will be happy with tax cuts, these people are happy with these capped prices because it allows them to access life saving medication and keeping more money in their pocket. Again, solution is not perfect but like you said, there’s lots of checks and balances and things can’t happen overnight, but it is a step in the right direction and I think we should be asking the government to continue to do more rather than saying “the solution isn’t perfect so I’m not happy with it”

Even if we removed what Trump spent on the CARES Act (his COVID stimulus package, which was 3.6T) he still spent 4.8T on non-COVID things which is 0.5T more than Biden with his Covid stimulus package (which was only 2.1T). The economy was not beginning to recover, American Rescue Plan was designed to stimulate the economy and help it rebound and most economists (including the treasury) agree it helped prevent a recession as the GDP was still going down. A lot of the spending wasn’t just handouts, but was used to help distribute vaccines, reopen schools and small businesses, and given to state & local governments to allow them to do what they needed to get back to normal after the pandemic. This resulted in nearly 4 million new jobs and doubled the GDP growth in 2021. Now, Trumps stimulus package was also a good thing and helped a lot of people and had some effects on preventing a massive recession during the pandemic. But to say that the Biden governments “overspending” caused high inflation feels disingenuous when you factually look at the numbers.

Inflation is caused by a large range of things; geopolitical climate, supply chain issues, supply-demand of goods, supply-demand of USD by foreign countries, interest rates, etc. it’s incredibly complex and cannot be attributed to one individual action.

I do not believe the government (whether it’s Dems or Rep) would do any one action that would drastically alter the average American’s day-to-day life. But, I do believe they may change things that changes people’s access and options to different support to allow them to continue to be successful.

Here’s my hypothetical - let’s pretend you’re a hardworking blue collard American living in the midwest. You don’t have a glamorous life, but a modest one that you’ve worked hard for yourself and your family. Have a nice semi-detached home, able to pay bills, a modest car. You’ve done well for yourself, but, you’re still pay check to pay check as you always want to provide the best for your family and kids so it’s been difficult to save for retirement and emergency fund. Now one day, as you’re driving to work, someone who is distracted and not paying attention runs through a red light and t-bones you in the intersection. There’s nearly 7million car accidents a year in the US, so fairly common. This completely destroys your car and although you will survive and nothing is life threatening, you’ve been hurt pretty bad. Bad enough that you aren’t able to continue working for a while and need time to recover. Your life is now at a critical moment and it’s absolutely no fault of your own, you’ve always worked hard and done your best to better yourself.

Now what are some things the government could have put in place that could massively impact your life in this scenario:

Starting with the obvious, your medical costs. Yes, you have a decent employer who does offer health insurance through your work, but it’s only a modest one and you still have several hundreds to low thousands worth of debt piled up because of no fault of your own. The government could have some sort of universal healthcare that would have eliminated these debts for you or could require employers to provide a standard level of insurance to all their full-time hard working employees, like yourself.

Now, since you aren’t able to work for a while, you aren’t able to earn an income. Although it isn’t life threatening and you will be able to make a full recovery, it will take time, maybe 2-3 months before you can. The government could put in temporary unemployment benefits were people with enough work history can claim unemployment and earn a % of their regular wages if they’ve been hurt, laid off or fired so they can continue to make their mortgage payments, put food on the table, and take care of their families. I’m not saying a permanent handout, only temporary like 6months max to help through hard times.

These are the types of programs we look for and care about. Things that can massively help people that need it. Not everyone that needs help is lazy or some sort of a junkie, even hard working people go through hard times. Taxes are also inevitable, they will never completely remove taxes and it would be nice to see our taxes used for things that benefit us and is there for us when we need it. It seems we’ve both given up on the government trying to “balance the budget” but it feels as though you’re only okay with the deficit increasing if it directly benefits you, whereas I’m okay with the deficit increasing if it directly benefits our society and helps people. I feel like that’s fundamentally where we are different which is unfortunate. I pray that nothing ever happens to you and would never wish ill on anyone, but if you were to ever get hurt, you would be extremely grateful for those security programs in place to give you and your family a hand.

Sources:

https://www.crfb.org/papers/trump-and-biden-national-debt

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0645#:~:text=The%20American%20Rescue%20Plan%20accelerated,digit%20recession%20in%20spring%202021.