Build Back Better: Stuck in limbo
Build Back Better is “resting on a political knife edge,” said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. President Biden spoke this week with intransigent centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to coax him into supporting BBB, but Manchin remained noncommittal, apparently intent on foiling the Democrats’ wish to pass the $1.75 trillion social spending bill by Christmas. Manchin claims he’s concerned about the bill’s impact on rising inflation and the deficit, calling potential costs “very sobering.” But BBB’s price tag comes over 10 years, is largely paid for by tax increases on the super-rich, and is “overwhelmingly future-oriented,” with roughly two-thirds of proposed spending going toward pre-K, child care, and initiatives to slow climate change. BBB is a bold investment in the future, and both Manchin and the Republicans are sabotaging it in “bad faith.”
It’s time to start asking if “BBB is DOA,” Henry Olsen in WashingtonPost.com. Manchin shows no signs of caving to his party’s left wing. He’s been complaining about the bill’s true cost, and the Congressional Budget Office backed him up, estimating that BBB would add $3 trillion to the deficit if its programs are extended over the next decade. House Democrats aren’t fooling anyone, said James Capretta in The Bulwark.com. They tried to “artificially lower the advertised total cost” of the bill by having key programs expire after a few years— for instance, “subsidies for enrolling in health insurance would expire after 2025”— knowing full well that Congress would face enormous political pressure to continue them, even as the national debt continues to soar. As Manchin said, “If we keep sending checks, it will be hard to stop.”
Letting BBB die in the Senate “would be a terrible loss”—both for Democrats and American families, said Greg Sargent in WashingtonPost.com. Passing BBB is necessary to extend the child tax credit created in this year’s Covid rescue package, which provides most families with up to $300 per month per child. That program already has cut child poverty by roughly a quarter. Democrats need to face their Manchin-shaped reality, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. With centrists blocking substantial tax hikes, BBB needs to be slimmed, and making its initiatives temporary is a dangerous ploy. A GOP Congress might let them all expire. If Democrats don’t make hard choices on which new programs to fund, “none of them will get anything.”