Consider that: In touting the benefits of a package that would spend an additional $3 trillion on top of the $1.9 trillion in stimulus money passed earlier this year, Biden is selling the package based on its fiscal prudence. Talk about chutzpah. We’ll let the fact checkers determine whether Biden’s economic claims are credible, but as a political matter, his need to temper concerns about excessive spending speaks volumes about the growing skepticism among the American public for major governmental programs as a tonic for the nation’s economic challenges.

The politics of the country have shifted markedly since Biden took office just nine months ago. At the beginning of the year, Biden was all but proclaiming the era of big government was back. He assumed the end of the pandemic would lead to healthy economic growth, boosting American optimism—and an appetite for endless stimulus. Instead, the pandemic lingered longer than the administration imagined and the excessive early spending binge caused inflationary pressures that wiped out all of the wage growth that top Biden administration officials have been bragging about.

As a result, the public has turned against the promise of a big, expensive government. A new Gallup survey found that a healthy 52 percent majority now believe that the government “is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses,” while just 43 percent agree that the government “should do more to solve the country’s problems.” That’s a major shift from the beginning of the Biden presidency, when 54 percent favored a greater role for government in the economy.