Whatever happened to GOP fiscal hawks?

Once upon a time, President Joe Biden’s spending proposals would have launched mass demonstrations in opposition.

Little else would have been talked about in conservative media, and ambitious GOP politicians would have competed with one another to demonstrate the most intense resistance, up to and perhaps including chaining themselves to the US Treasury building in protest. In 2009, then-President Barack Obama created a spontaneous, hugely influential conservative grassroots movement on the basis of an $800 billion stimulus bill and a health-care plan estimated to cost less than a trillion. In 2021, Biden is proposing to spend about $6 trillion in his first three big bills, and he can barely create more interest than the debate on wearing masks outdoors.