EDITORIAL: The wasteful spending Democrats don’t care about

Decades-high inflation is bad enough. Just wait until you find out how local governments spent the influx of federal dollars that are contributing to the ongoing surge in prices.

In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act. Supposedly, the $1.9 trillion spending measure was necessary to address the lingering effects of the pandemic. The economy, however, was already recovering from government-imposed business shutdowns.

Even some liberal economists warned at the time that such extravagant spending could produce inflation. As it turned out, sending out checks and paying people not to work during a supply chain crisis was a terrible idea. Inflation hit 8.5 percent in March, the highest rate since 1981. The Federal Reserve’s sluggish response all but ensures the country’s inflation problems are far from over.

But there’s another part of that disastrous bill that deserves more scrutiny. Mr. Biden and Congress sent $350 billion to state and local governments. Never mind that their coffers held up fairly well. That’s especially true when compared with many businesses, some of which went bankrupt under the weight of the government-imposed shutdowns and reluctant customer base.

The Associated Press did a deep dive recently into how that money was spent. To the shock of no one who is familiar with government bureaucracies, officials spent much of the money on pet projects.

The AP found that New Jersey earmarked $15 million for improvements meant to increase its chances of hosting the 2026 World Cup. In Iowa, $2 million went to buy a ski area. More than $6 million went for replacement irrigation systems at two Colorado Springs golf courses. This gives a whole new meaning to the term hitting the greens.

It wasn’t just sports. The AP found $2.5 million was spent on new parking enforcement officers in the nation’s capital. In Alabama, there was $400 million for new prisons. In Massachusetts, politicians sent $5 million to help the debt-laden Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate. There’s something fitting about a nonprofit named after a famous and big-spending Democratic senator struggling to pay its bills without running deficits.

The waste here is odious, but there’s also a larger point. Democrats constantly want conditions attached to tax money sent to those in the private sector. That’s often understandable. Taxpayer money should be treated with care. But when it comes to handing out cash to governments and public-sector unions, that insistence on oversight vanishes. Democrats sent out hundreds of billions of dollars with few strings and even less accountability.

That’s the bad news. The worst part is that you and your grandchildren will be paying interest on that deficit spending for decades to come.