Jay Powell has no idea what trouble he’s in. In a "60 Minutes" interview aired Sunday night, the mild-mannered Fed chair dared to suggest that our economy was on the cusp of "growing much more quickly," and predicted better-than-expected job creation ahead.

That did not sit well with Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. When asked about Powell’s remarks, the House speaker stressed his assessment that the nation will only "begin to see" improvement, and that the biggest risk to the economy remains another surge in COVID-19 cases. '

Who would have thought that GDP growth could be so controversial? Or that optimism about the economy could be such an affront to Democrats?

Joe Biden and his Democrat colleagues want the country to continue cowering in terror. They know the only possible way to cram through trillions of dollars in handouts to Democrat-friendly groups is by convincing Americans the end is near. They have always been the party of alarmism, warning for instance that the world will end in 12 years if we fail to address climate change, but today their pessimism is pointed and purposeful.

It is also dangerous.

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While Republicans and Democrats argue over what Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says are "semantics" – like whether hundreds of billions of dollars set aside for home care in the proposed "infrastructure" bill actually constitutes infrastructure – our country is piling up more debt relatively to our economy than at any time since World War II. We can agree that COVID has delivered a terrible blow to our nation, but as a national disaster it does not rank with the last Great War.

Here’s one way of assessing where we are and what kind of federal spending might make sense. In February 2009, as President Obama signed the $800 billion stimulus package, unemployment was 8.1%, on its way to 10%, and the number of unemployed Americans was 12.5 million, growing fast.

But it is this figure that tells us the $1.9 trillion in new spending was excessive: as Obama put federal money to work trying to offset the downturn caused by the financial crisis, there were only 3 million jobs open in the entire country, and the number was dropping. We know that from the JOLTs (or job openings) report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

By contrast, last month’s JOLTs report showed that on the last day of February this year, there were 7.4 million jobs available, and that figure was growing. If all those jobs were filled, unemployment would be close to where it was in February 2020, before COVID wrecked our nation.

Does it matter? Does excess spending hurt our country? Yes, the risks to our country are that the Democrats’ massive outlays will ignite damaging inflation, and that the expansion of welfare programs contained in the various "relief" bills will become a permanent part of our government, slowing future growth. These risks are real, and are being totally ignored by Democrats.