Joe Biden, you created this inflation mess. Now you have a chance to fix it. Sign the Limit, Save, Grow Act.

The GOP proposal cuts $1.5 trillion in spending and limits future spending increases to 1% a year. With our national debt at an unsustainable $31.4 trillion, it barely makes a dent. But it's a start.

Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell can’t admit that a key driver of inflation has been excessive federal spending because he's a political appointee who will never insult his current boss––President Biden and a Democratic Senate––with the truth. So, here it is. The inflationary spending cycle we’ve experienced over the past few years started under President Trump at the height of COVID as a way to help small businesses stay afloat and keep employees tethered to their employers. That historic Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) worked. So did Operation Warp Speed. Powell himself sweetened the relief with quantitative easing to boost asset prices and maintain full employment. The delicate stimulus tightrope would have succeeded had we gradually lifted the federal foot off the accelerator, as American employers regained their footing and as COVID restrictions and bailouts came off.

Then Joe Biden came to office, and like some oafish clodhopper in a field of tulips, dropped $1.9 trillion in unnecessary, enervating, COVID-pretexted, and racially charged welfare on America through his American Rescue Plan. His cynically named Inflation Reduction Act subsequently expanded Democrats’ war on job creators, with corporate tax mandates, perverse taxes on stock buybacks (which are none of the government’s business), and 87,000 new IRS agents to audit small business owners, though those agents were ostensibly hired to snare the billionaire bogeymen today’s Democratic Socialists never tire of demonizing even as their pals at Arabella slip them millions in billionaire cash. The Tax Foundation estimated that the IRA’s taxes and mandates would increase inflation “by constraining the productive capacity of the U.S. economy.” They have so far been proven right.

What started as a mild, manageable inflationary blip born of necessary pandemic relief became a Biden inflationary bonfire. Because the President would not get his discretionary spending under control, it was left to Fed Chair Powell to do that work for him. The result of the Fed’s draconian interest rate hikes has been a series of bank failures and increased tightening in overall lending standards. Small businesses––already operating within tight margins due to massive wage inflation and supply chain bottlenecks––have been hurt the most. Commercial real estate is in deep trouble. Ditto for thousands of startups (the lifeblood of the economy). Meanwhile, the stock market remains in a tight anemic range, with a possible huge drop in the offing as the debt cliff approaches, the AI buzz peaks, and recession fear rear its head.

Will Powell “land the plane safely,” per the overused Sully metaphor? That depends on Biden and the Democrats acting out of character and signing the sensible GOP plan to raise the debt ceiling. The GOP’s Limit, Save, Grow Act pushes for an end to inflationary student loan forgiveness and Solyndra-style tax breaks to favored green corporations, rescinds billions in additional spending for the IRS, and institutes far stricter work requirements for mostly unnecessary government welfare while clawing back $60 billion in COVID spending now that both the President and the W.H.O. have declared the pandemic over.

These kinds of GOP reforms are anathema to a Democratic Party whose electoral success is built on using taxpayer funds to buy votes, Machine-style patronage, an iron grip on media, social media, entertainment, and search, and vast sums of dark campaign cash. But due to their profligacy, it’s the medicine they will now be forced to take.

Let’s be very clear––the hapless Republicans are no strangers to tone-deaf idiocy: pushing for a politically suicidal national abortion ban and ridiculously restrictive state abortion bans, selecting extreme, if entertaining, partisan doofuses that would prove to be unelectable in a general election, pushing decades of costly NeoCon wars of choice abroad, and, of course, still allowing their standard-bearer to truck in the lie that he lost the 2020 election due to massive voter fraud. The 2020 election was gamed in many questionable ways, but Trump lost.

One thing is also very clear: Republicans are not to blame for the current inflationary mess. Biden and his fellow Democrats dramatically increased spending, the deficit, and thus inflation when their own top economic advisors, including Clinton Treasury Secretary and Obama economic advisor Larry Summers, said it would dramatically amplify inflation already percolating in the system, further weakening the U.S. dollar.

The Republicans have put forward a modest proposal that cuts $1.5 trillion in spending and caps further increases in spending to just 1% a year. With our national debt at an unsustainable $31.4 trillion, there should be mandatory yearly 5% cuts in discretionary spending. The Republican plan makes barely a dent. But it's a start.

Mr. Schumer and Mr. Biden, you created this mess. Now you have a shot at fixing it. Sign the Limit, Save, Grow Act.