Fiscal conservatives lately have argued that the federal government should spend as it did before COVID-19 ruined everything.

Thankfully, the global pandemic is a speck in the rearview mirror. Only a few diehards cling bitterly to their masks and grow misty with lockdown nostalgia.

Restoring spending to its trajectory in fiscal year 2019—the last before COVID-19 wandered out of China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology—could be treacherous, even for die-hard budget hawks.

January 2025’s domestic discretionary baseline for fiscal year 2026 is $1.897 trillion. In August 2019, it was $1.332 trillion. Adopting the latter would require a one-year, $565 billion spending cut. Similar hefty disbursement reductions would continue every year thereafter. Such belt-tightening would hurt. The Congressional Budget Office would have to hire a staff anesthesiologist.

Why not........

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