One of the arguments Progressive-Democrats are using to rationalize their claimed need to pass their spendiferous reconciliation bill is one being advanced by Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D, MI), this time via a Friday interview with Martha MacCallum on her The Story. Huge spending subsidies for child care is necessary because folks can’t otherwise afford it, so they can’t go back to work.

What Progressive-Democrats refuse to address, though—including Dingell (and MacCallum shied away from asking Dingell about it)—is that pre-pandemic, folks could afford child care, the unemployment rate was solidly below 4%, and the labor force participation rate was two per centage points higher than today.

What’s changed? I mean, besides lockdowns, which we now know was a mistake, yet Progressive-Democrats still demand them, and Progressive-Democrats having gained power and insist on throwing money at an economy that cannot absorb it without historically high inflation.