Dems say the social spending bill is free, but the CBO now disagrees.
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Biden’s selling proposition for his social spending program: It won’t cost a dime.
Manchin says that he’ll vote against it if it costs more than $1.75 trillion.
The bill that Congress passed is loaded with accounting gimmicks … mostly pretending that expensive programs will be terminated after one or two years … rather than becoming permanent spending fixtures.
Well, end of last week, the CBO released an estimate that de-gimmicks the BBB bill to estimate the real cost of the program.
Budgetary Effects of Making Specified Policies in the Build Back Better Act Permanent (cbo.gov)
And the answer is: $3 trillion … which certainly doesn’t qualify as rounding error … or statistical insignificance.
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According to the CBO analysis, three line items alone account for over $2.5 trillion in spending:
Pretending that the child tax credit and child care programs terminate in 2022 and 2027, respectively … and, raising the State & Local Tax Deduction limit from $10,000 to $80,000.
In total, the top 7 line items account for over $3.3 trillion in spending … up $2.5 trillion from the gimmicky bill, as passed by Congress.
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As the WSJ points out:
All of this gives Mr. Manchin, and other Democrats hiding behind his skepticism, ample ammunition to call the whole thing off.
If this bill passes, they’ll own all of the deficits, debt and inflation that result.
That said, I’m betting under on Manchin having the ‘nads to vote no on BBB.
The Homa Files 