Americans should be deeply troubled by the recent report that the Army is on pace to miss its recruiting goal by dozens of thousands of troops this year and by another report which followed a few days later, alleging that the Border Patrol is running dangerously short of agents in Arizona and Texas. The border is so porous these days that even mayors of sanctuary cities are starting to complain about illegal immigration.

So, what is Congress doing about these crises? In short, nothing. Instead, they are going to spend tens of billions of dollars to significantly increase the number of… IRS employees. The plan calls for spending some $80 billion to hire some 80,000 new agents and investigators.

This will give the IRS the resources to double the number of people who get audited every year!

Meanwhile, according to official budget numbers, the overall cost of border security at the Department of Homeland Security is roughly $55 billion a year. That is less than just the increase in IRS funding to harass the public.

Or consider this: The epidemic of opioid and other drug overdoses is killing close to 100,000 Americans a year. We spend about $11 billion a year to prevent these tragic deaths. But the ironically named Inflation Reduction Act calls for 30 times more than this, or more than $300 billion, to try to combat climate change, while the number of those who die from CO2 emissions each year is close to zero.

All of this is to say the Biden-Manchin-Schumer spending bill that has now passed the Senate is arguably the greatest misallocation of our federal dollars in American history. It would spend a huge amount of money in areas where we should be cutting expenses and ignores national security priorities.

The reason we have the highest inflation in over 40 years is that the Biden administration increased spending by $3 trillion in 18 months. Almost everyone knows this. The central idiocy of the Biden Inflation Reduction Act is that instead of cutting a half a trillion from the budget, this bill does just the opposite: It increases spending by that amount.

Incredibly, a bill that supposedly reduces the budget deficit does not cut one penny of actual spending from the federal budget. Even with federal audit reports finding more than $250 billion of “erroneous payments” in Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment insurance, Congress does nothing to reduce the fraud and theft.

As the latest report on shortages of recruits in our armed forces tells us, we have national priorities that need to be met. This bill bloats the budget, makes inflation worse, and will add to our $30 trillion national debt without dealing with any of the nation’s most pressing priorities.

This is just one more reason why President Biden’s approval rating is the lowest of any president since records have been kept. The latest Gallup poll released late last month reported a 38% approval rating, a new low for Biden. His approval rating began at 57% and was at 41% in June, according to the same survey. His disapproval rating is at an all-time high of 62%.

Meanwhile, the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll found almost 70% of adults believe the US economy is getting worse. Just 12% responded that they believe President Joe Biden’s economy is getting better after it posted back-to-back quarters of negative growth. The remaining 18% believe the economy has remained the same or have no opinion.

The Democrats have a real dilemma on their hands. Based both on his awful approval rating and his age, many Democrats don’t want President Biden to run for a second term. But based on recent public comments, Mr. Biden has made it clear that he intends to run for re-election in 2024.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. President Biden has every right to run for re-election, and the Democrats have no legal mechanism for denying him that right. It remains to be seen if the Democrat leadership can convince him not to run.

The Republicans have their own problem. Most in the GOP leadership do not want Donald Trump to run for president in 2024. Many do not want Trump to run simply because they don’t like him, while others argue he is too old. He will be 78 in 2024 (Biden will be 79).

So, the 2024 presidential election, and the runup to it, will be one of the most interesting in recent memory… for both parties.

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