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President Joe Biden’s “Bidenomics” spending spree is buying nothing but record debt, lower wages, and a weaker economy, and Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) keeps cosigning the charges, according to a new campaign out this week from Americans For Prosperity.

AFP, a libertarian-leaning grassroots activist organization, is launching an ad campaign in five states targeting Democrats who, like Pappas, are in more centrist districts but embraced Biden’s entire economic agenda, including trillions in post-COVID spending.

The 15-second streaming ad highlights the negative consequences of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, like the inflationary increase in prices for gas, groceries, and housing now faced by average Americans. According to AFP, it takes an extra $11,400 to afford the standard of living Americans had when Biden took office in January, 2021.

“Rep. Pappas has done nothing but rubber-stamp President Biden’s agenda. And it couldn’t be further from what Granite Staters expect of their elected leaders,” said Greg Moore, AFP-NH’s state director. “You can see the difference between the heavy hand of Bidenomics and the light-touch policies that have made New Hampshire the freest state in the nation with robust economic growth.

“Rep. Pappas needs to give up on Bidenomics and take a page from the New Hampshire Advantage,” Moore said.

AFP’s campaign, which will include the streaming ad as well as direct mail and door-to-door outreach, is a response to Biden’s reelection campaign Bidenomics Bus Tour. Despite polls showing nearly twice as many Americans believe Biden has hurt the economy (49 percent) than helped it (28 percent), the incumbent president has made “Bidenomics” a centerpiece of his campaign for a second term.

“No president’s had the run we’ve had in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation,” Biden claimed last week. “It was 9 percent when I came to office, 9 percent.”

(Biden’s claim is false. Inflation was actually 1.4 percent when Biden took office, though it soared to 9 percent in June, 2022.)

Not surprisingly, the candidates in the First Congressional District GOP primary aren’t fans of Biden’s economics.

“As a small business owner, I have felt the implications of President Biden’s painful inflation and Congressman Pappas’ reckless tax and spend agenda in Washington,” said Republican Russell Prescott. “As a former state senator who has balanced budgets and stopped a sales and income tax, I have the necessary experience of governing in a fiscally responsible way. Our campaign is uniquely positioned to hold Chris Pappas accountable for his out-of-control spending spree in Congress, and we look forward to doing so this November.”

Pappas is also a business owner — his family owns the Puritan Backroom restaurant in Manchester — a fact noted by GOP contender Chris Bright.

“Thanks to the disastrous Biden-Pappas economic agenda, New Hampshire families pay more for their mortgage, more for groceries, more for gas and even the chicken tenders at the Puritan Backroom cost over 30 percent more than they did before their reckless spending spree.

“It’s time for a dramatic change of direction that reins in overspending, puts our economy back on track and gets the cost of living under control.” 

And Hollie Noveletsky, another GOP candidate, said the spending pushed by Pappas and Biden adds up to fiscal pain for everyone else.

“As the owner of a small business that has been debt-free for over 30 years, I have to be fiscally responsible. If I wasn’t, my company would be bankrupt and my employees would lose their jobs,” Noveletsky said.

“Unfortunately, career politicians like Chris Pappas have blown out government spending which has been the main cause of inflation and higher costs. Those increased costs are putting the squeeze on middle-class families when they go to the grocery store. That real life impact will definitely impact the ballot box this November.”

Pappas voted for all of Biden’s major spending proposals, including the American Rescue Plan of 2021 ($1.9 trillion), the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act ($1 trillion) and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act ($1 trillion), which economists agree is not reducing inflation.

The spending has driven the U.S. federal debt to $35 trillion. In fiscal year 2022, the deficit was $1.38 trillion. The following year it was $1.7 trillion. This year, the budget deficit will total $1.5 trillion and grow to $2.6 trillion by 2034, with interest payments on the debt going from $659 billion in 2023 to more than $1.6 trillion by 2034.

“Interest on the national debt, already higher than federal spending on children or Medicaid, will exceed spending on defense next year, on its way to $1 trillion by 2026. This is no way to run a country,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The debt is also cutting into income and wages for most Americans, according to the CBO. Over the next three decades, the national debt is expected to cut wages and income by at least $8,000 per person, though if more debt is added under Biden’s proposals, that could jump to as much as $141,000 in lost income over 30 years, according to the CBO.

MacGuineas said it’s past time for Congress to take responsibility before the debt crashes the economy.

“We can start by actually passing a budget and by establishing a bipartisan fiscal commission to tackle some of these issues. We need a real plan to put the national debt on a downward sustainable path before it’s too late,” MacGuineas said.

Pappas declined to respond to requests for comment.

Inescapable realities about New Hampshire: Live Free or Die is the best state motto; we have better maple syrup than Vermont; and we may never stop fighting about the right way to pay for public education.

Everything about school funding is up for grabs this year, with new proposals coming out of the State House, a lawsuit heading to the state Supreme Court, and an open gubernatorial race putting free-market reforms in the spotlight.

“This is a great opportunity for us to have these conversations,” said Sarah Scott with Americans for Prosperity.

Scott and AFP hosted a forum last week at Throwback Brewery in North Hampton with state Reps. Glenn Cordelli (R-Tuftonboro) and Dan Maguire (R-Epsom) to educate people about the realities of the biggest tax bill in the state.

The problem is front and center for legislators this session, who are working on different proposals to address education spending without raising taxes. But whether they do that is up in the air.

Cordelli, vice chair of the House Education Committee, said there’s no guarantee conservative lawmakers can get meaningful changes since House membership is split so evenly. Republicans control the House with a slight majority, which can evaporate depending on the time of day. If the weather is bad, or several members are sick, or votes happen after lunch, the majority can flip.

“Every day, it’s a gamble which party is in charge depending on who gets to the State House,” Coredelli said.

But the local level is where taxpayers bear the largest education funding burden, Scott said. “Most towns spend between two-thirds and three-quarters of their taxes on education.”

And they could end up paying more, thanks to the recent court decision in the ConVal funding lawsuit. Judge David Ruoff ordered the state’s adequacy grant of $4,100 per pupil raised to at least $7,300. The ConVal ruling is causing more problems than it will solve, Maguire said.

“ConVal is the logical conclusion of 30 years of bad rulings,” Maguire said, who sits on the House Finance Committee. “At some point, we have to get off this track of unreality.”

The Supreme Court’s Claremont decision from the 1990s paved the way for adequacy grants and the statewide property tax. Currently, the state sends about one billion dollars a year to local schools in the form of adequacy grants and other aid programs. 

Under the current system, what each town gets per pupil varies. The base grant of $4,100 goes up for students determined to have greater need, and for students in communities that are considered property poor. However, Maguire said if Ruoff’s ruling stands, all of the extra funding for students and communities in need would go away. 

Ruoff’s ConVal ruling would seem to add at least $500 million to education spending on top of what is already being paid. But Maguire said it would result in all of the funding being replaced by a flat $7,300 per pupil grant, leaving poor communities scrambling again. 

Lawmakers are searching for a fix while the state appeals Ruoff’s ruling to the state Supreme Court. But state spending on education represents less than a third of total spending. The rest comes from homeowners through local property taxes, and those taxpayers are already shelling out more for less.

Department of Education data released this month show the new statewide average operating cost per student has reached a record-setting $20,323 for the 2022-2023 school year. That’s a 4.8 percent increase over last year’s $19,400 and close to a 90 percent increase on 2000’s $11,000 per pupil cost.

This year’s new average — well above the national $14,295 — puts the Granite State on track to spend $3.8 billion in total on education for the 2022-2023 school year.

Over the same period, student enrollment numbers in the Granite State cratered. The student population dropped from 207,684 in 2002 to 165,095 in 2023. That’s a decrease of 42,589 public school students, or about a 20.5 percent decline during the past 21 years. 

Coredelli sees an opportunity to deliver education in charter schools and the Education Freedom Account system with better results and lower costs.

“At the end of the day, the free market is the only way to make changes to education,” Cordelli said.

About 7,000 students are enrolled in New Hampshire’s charter schools. Those tuition-free public schools receive state funding of up to $9,000 per pupil and no local tax revenue. Instead, the schools are operated as non-profits and raise donations to cover expenses beyond the state grants.

The EFA program awards grants of around $5,000 per pupil to qualifying families, who are then able to put that money toward any education choice: public, private, or home school. EFA enrollment went up 20 percent this year to 4,211 while costing taxpayers about $22 million in total. 

Granite Staters are paying too much for healthcare, have too few options, and don’t want to be stuck with government-run plans that are part of the Affordable Care Act.

That was the view of several panelists who participated in a radio roundtable on the Pulse of New Hampshire Friday, led by host Jack Heath. 

Heath said the politics of healthcare have become too fraught with Republicans and Democrats dug in. “Republicans would prefer private healthcare options, but they run away from the issue,” Heath said.

Americans for Prosperity New Hampshire head Greg Moore is also a former director at the N.H. Department of Health and Human Services. He said that in poll after poll, New Hampshire residents say they want better choices.

“People don’t like high costs, and they don’t like government-run healthcare,” Moore said. “There are other options, like giving everyone an HSA (health savings account).” 

There are ways to create more competition in the healthcare marketplace that will help drive down costs; he said. Moore favors options like changing the tax code to give individuals the same healthcare tax benefits that businesses currently enjoy.

The Main Street Freedom Alliance radio roundtable on health care hosted by Jack Heath on April 14, 2023.

And it’s not just individuals who are sick of the costs and regulations. Christie Elliot Peters, co-owner of Elliot Controls, an Amherst HVAC company that specializes in automated building controls, said her employees would love to be able to sign up for the company health plan rather than the Affordable Care Act Granite Advantage plan. But the plans her small business is able to secure can price out some workers. She said the costs have been going up almost every year for decades.

“When I trace back, the jumps we have had in rates result from legislation that was supposed to fix the problems or because of the Affordable Care Act,” Peters said.

State Sen. Keith Murphy (R-Bedford) owns Murphy’s Tap Room with locations in Manchester and Bedford. He told Heath he spends hundreds of hours every year trying to get the best plans to offer his 65 employees, But he said the plans are so expensive many of his younger workers opt out.

“When you’re 23, you’re immortal, you think,” Murphy said.

D.J. Bettencourt, deputy commissioner at New Hampshire’s Insurance Department, said Washington regulations that favor individual plans over small businesses are hurting the economy, especially in the Granite State. With New Hampshire companies struggling to hire workers, a good healthcare plan can be the difference between getting and keeping qualified employees.

“The government is trying to improve the individual market and not helping the small business market,” Bettencourt said.

He said New Hampshire’s economy relies on small business owners like Peters and Murphy. “We are a small business state; they are the engine of our economy,” he said.

Bettencourt noted between the aging New Hampshire population and the large swath of people signed up for Granite Advantage; insurance carriers see less reason to offer their plans in New Hampshire given the small pool of potential customers. 

“Layer on government regulations with that smaller pool, it’s even less attractive for (insurance) companies.”

That leaves people and businesses with fewer, more expensive options.

State Rep. Jess Edwards (R-Auburn) told the roundtable people want more choice in their healthcare options, but the government simply cannot get out of the way. Part of the problem is the unwillingness of Democrats to revisit the Affordable Care Act. 

“Democrats would not support plans to let people out of [the ACA] and get on plans offered by small businesses,” Edwards said.

Republicans also seem unable to address the problem in a meaningful way on their side of the aisle. Bettencourt noted the GOP had a trifecta in 2017 — control of the U.S. House, Senate, and White House — and could still not pass legislation to give people more choices.

“They were like the dog that caught the car,” Bettencourt said.

Moore said Democrats are bent on pushing for more government involvement in the healthcare market as part of the ultimate push for universal healthcare.

“Democrats want to increase the number of people on government insurance,” Moore said. “We need a third way.”

Listen to the entire discussion here.

On Tuesday, House Democrats came within a single vote of approving a bill undermining the state’s Education Freedom Accounts, a sign of their commitment to waging war on the popular school choice program.

Hours earlier, Gov. Chris Sununu released his budget proposal for the biennium, proposing a doubling of EFA funding and expanding the number of eligible families. With polls showing overwhelming support for parental control of education, it’s an issue Republicans are likely to continue to advance.

The expanded EFA funding was part of an education budget proposal to add “an additional $200 million over the next two years — and an additional $1 billion over the next ten years – all with a priority towards school districts that need this aid the most,” Sununu said Tuesday. “These investments, which flow directly to local schools, will help cities and towns lower their property taxes.”

Participation in the EFA program has outstripped original estimates, with more than 3,000 students in the program in just its second year. Democrats say this is a sign the program was poorly designed, and they complain that most parents accessing the funding were already sending their children to private schools.

Their solution — in HB430 and SB141 — is to force parents who want to use EFA funding to send their children to private, parochial or home school must first force them to spend a year at their locally-assigned public school. Even if the student is already thriving in the school chosen by their parents.

As progressive state Sen. Debra Altschiller (D-Stratham) told the state Senate Education Committee last month, while there are some students for whom their public school “may not be the best fit….We can’t know how anything fits without first trying it.”

Using EFA funds “should require families avail themselves of the educational opportunities offered to them first,” Altschiller said. “Before opting out of the public school system, take advantage of the educational opportunities in your community provided to you.”

Rep. David Luneau (D-Concord), prime sponsor of the House bill, is deputy ranking member of the House Education Committee. He echoed Altshiller’s objections.

“Rather than simply transferring state funds when students leave public school, the program is open to students already in private education, who otherwise receive no state funding,” Luneau said in a statement. “This has caused the EFA budget and tax obligation of Granite Staters to quickly skyrocket, as most vouchers awarded have gone to students already in private school.”

The EFA program is already limited to families earning less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level. This year it will cost $14 million of the total $3.5 billion New Hampshire spends on k-12 education.

Still, Democrats are determined to end it. Even if it means disrupting educational success, critics say.

“Some legislators in the House wanted to force Granite State students to return to institutions that they already have chosen to leave,” said Sarah Scott of Americans for Prosperity New Hampshire. “Besides being highly disruptive to students’ education and traumatizing to students who have encountered bullying or fled ineffective learning environments, it undermines the decisions that parents have already made for their children.”

Altschiller sent her own children to expensive private academies.

During a Senate committee hearing on the bill, parents with children already using alternative education would be pushed back into public schools that had already failed them.

“I have a 5-year-old who started home school this year — does she need to go to second grade for a year, and then come out again, so we can take advantage of the funds?” asked James Van Nest of Dorchester, N.H. “My son hasn’t finished a full year of public school. Does he now need to re-enter the school system and then can we use the funds once we take him out?”

Despite the potentially drastic impact of the bill, every Democrat in the House except one — Philip Jones of Keene — voted for it on Tuesday, and every Democrat in the state Senate is a cosponsor, a sign of the depth of their opposition. The House vote came just days after an NHJournal poll found overwhelming bipartisan support for parental rights in decisions regarding the education of their children.

The vote was so close, Speaker Sherman Packard had to take the unusual move of casting a vote from the chair to create a 185-185 tie, preventing it from being sent on to the House Finance Committee. In a subsequent vote, the Democrats’ plan was tabled 186-183.

“It is disappointing that Republicans voted to the unsustainable giveaway to current private school students today, but House Democrats will continue fighting to establish appropriate guardrails in the EFA program,” Luneau said.

“For Democrats, kids are nothing more than ‘school funding units,” responded Rep. Glenn Cordelli (R-Tuftonboro), also a member of the Education Committee. “We believe they are children who deserve the best education that meets their needs – as determined by their parents.”