Put Build Back Better on pause and do the math

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.VA., just did the nation a big favor when he slammed the brakes on President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better spending plan.

Proponents argue that their proposals for free day care, $300 monthly payments per child, lower cost prescription drugs and measures to address climate change are popular with the American people. When people are told something is free it is sure to be popular. But that opinion would undoubtedly change if the American people were told how much those free things will truly cost.

The Biden administration and congressional Democrats are not being honest about Build Back Better. They are intentionally hiding the price tag. The plan before the U.S. Senate is billed as costing $1.75 trillion over 10 years. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, if all Build Back Better programs were in place over the next 10 years, the real cost is almost $5 trillion.

The enhanced child tax credits alone, initially adopted in March, distribute $300 per month per child and would annually cost more than $1.2 trillion. But Build Back Better assumes that the program will only last a single year to make it fit under congressional budget reconciliation rules.

The plan is littered with such financial shenanigans.

Everyone knows that once enacted, a spending program rarely ends. Where will the money come from to permanently fund these programs? Democrats won’t say.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Congress — first under former President Donald Trump and lately under Biden — has provided more than $5.7 trillion to the economy. Federal cash flowed to prop up businesses, families, state and local governments, school districts, higher education, transit agencies and a host of other entities. The Federal Reserve has injected an additional $4 trillion in monetary liquidity, purchasing government bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

Much of the government response was necessary, keeping families and businesses afloat during a worldwide pandemic. However, the fiscal and monetary stimulus has unleashed the highest inflation rate — 7 percent — since 1982. Biden economic advisers and the Federal Reserve assured us that inflation was transitory. They’re no longer saying that. In fact, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell recently said it was “time to retire that word.”

Senator Manchin has been warning for months that he feared such spending was spurring a dangerous inflationary spiral. He urged that Biden and Democrats pause Build Back Better until much later in 2022, allowing Congress to assess economic conditions.

While both parties have utilized budget reconciliation to avoid Senate filibusters and pass legislation on a partisan basis, Build Back Better is unprecedented in its use of fiscal chicanery to conceal true costs.

The plan is also audacious in its ambitions to expand the role of government. Child tax credits would no longer require a parent to work to qualify and undocumented children are eligible, creating yet another incentive for illegal immigration into the United States. Special interest provisions are added for unions, trial lawyers and other favored progressive constituencies.

BBB would put us on a path of unsustainable deficits burdening future generations with dangerous levels of spending and debt, requiring higher taxes on everyone to service such debt. A Penn Wharton study suggests the plan alone would increase the national debt by a whopping 24 percent by 2050.

International rivals — particularly China — will surely take advantage of a U.S. budget crisis as they seek to undermine confidence in democratic systems. A financially stressed America will also be less able to deal with unexpected crises at home and abroad. If COVID has taught us anything, it is that we need to prepare for the unexpected.

Democrats should take Joe Manchin’s advice and hit the pause button on Build Back Better.