The incredible moving $$

THESE THINGS are moving targets. But come on. The papers said on Friday morning that the U.S. House of Representatives was going to pass the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better plan that President Biden has been pushing. It was said that members were behind closed doors, working through the night, gathering up all the pieces that must be in place to get many congressmen and congresswomen on board.

Then later Friday morning, Fox News reported that the House had passed a $1.75 trillion plan. And the network called it “mammoth.”

A few minutes later, the headline on CNN was:

House passes Biden’s $1.9 trillion spending bill

Gulp. The number keeps climbing. Like an unwanted sticker bush in your tomato garden. But it didn’t stop growing for hours. The website of The Washington Post put out a “breaking news” flash about 9 a.m. Friday:

House passes $2 trillion spending package!

Well for pete’s sake, which is it? How did it go from $1.7 trillion to $2 trillion in a couple of hours, and what will it be tomorrow? This thing still has to go through the Senate, and then be signed by the president, but it seems to grow with every headline. And it’s not insignificant growth. The difference between $1.7 trillion and $2 trillion is three hundred billion dollars. That isn’t just a rounding error. The world’s aircraft carriers—all of them— could be replaced with three hundred billion dollars.

And some folks wonder why there is so much opposition to this massive spending bill. Maybe it’s because nobody seems to know exactly what the darn thing costs hour-to-hour. Or what it will cost by the time Congress finally gets it to the president’s desk.