SPECIAL REPORT - The Road to Inflation: How an Unprecedented Federal Spending

This belief stemmed in part from the failure of the 2009 stimulus package to restore growth during the Great Recession, which some on the left claimed was due to insuffi- cient spending.45 However, this progressive view ignored the true lessons of the 2009 stimulus and the economic realities in the spring of 2021: SPECIAL REPORT | No. [...] While the three bills will not add to deficits on the same scale as the pan- demic-era spending spree, they demonstrate that Members of Congress in both parties remain wedded to the false notion that greater federal control over the nation’s resources is the solution to most problems, even after the disastrous results of the earlier spending binge.99 The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). [...] Surviving the Consequences of the Spending Spree The enormity of the recent spending spree and the resulting economic consequences highlight the importance of fiscal responsibility. [...] Maintaining the status quo of increasing the national debt in relation to the size of the economy threat- ens to cause an unsustainable increase in the cost of debt service. [...] The employment mandate on the Fed has led the Fed to conduct the past 14 years of QE rounds, injecting $8 trillion of new currency into the economy and bringing its assets to more than 35 percent of GDP— all of which has led to surging inflation and spiking interest rates.172 In essence, the disastrous focus on the employment mandate has led to the effective abandonment of the stable price and mod.