Our fiscal hero of the year – the competition was not tough – is Rand Paul of Kentucky. He pointed out the other day in a Senate floor statement that if Congress would simply return to the pre-pandemic level of government spending, we would have a balanced budget.

We didn’t believe his arithmetic, so we ran the numbers. Sure enough, if Congress did what he suggests, we wouldn’t have a $1.2 trillion deficit this year, but rather a $200 billion SURPLUS. Green, not red ink. Even if we adjusted the 2019 budget for inflation we would still be saving almost $1 trillion.

This might seem inconceivable that Congress would return to pre-pandemic spending levels, but this would only be following the historical precedent. When a crisis is over, we CUT the budget and run SURPLUSES. That was true after the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World Wars One and Two, the Great Depression, and the Cold War.

Instead, the imbeciles on Capitol Hill – in BOTH parties – have just completed the biggest budget bender in modern times.

Put a lump of coal in all of their stockings!