It has only been six months since President Biden took office and already the country is moving in the wrong direction. The economic growth of the Trump years is screeching to a halt and the solution from President Biden and Democrats in Congress is more and more government spending.

At the end of 2020, the economy was finally resurging. After the world was shocked by the COVID-19 virus in March and April of 2020, we had an improvement in the unemployment rate each month until this Spring. After 11 months of significant job growth, the unemployment rate increased in April for the first time since last year.

The majority of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine and COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted around the country. This should be a time when the recovery reaches new heights.

There were 9.3 million million job openings in April. That’s more job openings than in any time in the last year. But those jobs may not get filled anytime soon. Because of President Biden’s decision to continue an unsustainable level of federal unemployment benefits, some workers can make as much or more on unemployment than by getting back to work. If you offer to pay people not to work, they’ll take you up on it.

The failure of the Biden Administration has forced some governors to act on their own. So far, 25 states have announced plans to wind down the extra $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits. I applaud Governor Jim Justice’s responsible decision to join that group in May. When federal leadership fails, governors must step up and make the best decisions for their states.

West Virginia has had a particular problem with worker shortages for years now. Gil White, State Director of the National Federation of Independent Business was asked by WVNews about the worker shortage and responded, “That is not a myth; it’s a reality. I don’t care if it’s a large business or small business employers. I think there’s a common theme that finding workers is very challenging to say the least.”

After a tumultuous year with government shutdowns and strict capacity limits, the last thing small businesses need is a worker shortage that leaves them unprepared to meet the demands of a reopening economy. President Biden’s decision to spend your taxpayer dollars is not the solution. With our federal budget deficit at an already alarming level, more spending will bring about other problems.

Our debt is currently more than $28 trillion and our deficits have grown substantially larger in the past year due to spending in response to COVID-19. And yet, President Biden is currently pushing for more than $4 trillion in new spending. President Biden has plans to spend your taxpayer dollars to build hundreds of thousands of electric vehicle charging stations, retrofit buildings across America to make them “greener” and a laundry list of other progressive priorities.

Despite his sometimes-moderate demeanor, President Biden’s campaign platform was always liberal. Mr. Biden made a long list of promises to the left-wing in his party, like when he said he would “get rid of fossil fuels.” It should come as no surprise that his administration is shaping up to be the most liberal in recent memory.

We do not need to keep borrowing from China so we can spend money that we don’t have. There is a simple solution: unwind these expensive government programs, continue opening up the economy and let people earn a living again. That is our country’s path forward.