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“President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he and Democrats in Congress have reached a ‘historic’ framework for his sweeping domestic policy package… He’s now pressing for a still-robust package — $1.75 trillion of social services and climate change programs — that the White House believes can pass the 50-50 Senate.” AP News
The new framework includes:
The framework does not include:
Reuters
Here’s our recent coverage of the reconciliation bill. The Flip Side
The right opposes Biden’s framework, arguing that it is too costly and also inefficient.
“The $1.75 trillion cost that Democrats have assigned their bill is an illusion. They use phony accounting to finance a few years of new spending with 10 years of tax increases. For example, the plan extends the $3,600 child tax credit for one year at a cost of $110 billion. But Democrats will inevitably extend the credit next year. If Republicans oppose this or try to scale the credit back, they will be attacked for raising taxes on middle-class families. The true 10-year cost is about $1.1 trillion…
“Democrats also plan to extend ObamaCare subsidies through 2025 for higher earners and broaden them to low-income folks in states that rejected the Medicaid expansion. The White House says this will cost $130 billion, but the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that providing coverage to these folks would cost north of $500 billion over a decade. These programs are merely illustrative of how Democrats are desperately trying to squeeze a menagerie of spending into their negotiated $1.75 trillion top-line cost, with the real cost likely to be closer to $4 trillion.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“As the legislative process continues to play out, Senator Manchin should insist on his red line of restoring the work requirement for [the expanded child tax credit]… It is well documented that work plays a crucial role in the well-being of adults and families. Work brings structure, physical and mental activity, social interaction, and purpose — all of which vastly improve overall health, productivity, and financial security. Work also strengthens communities and prevents the sort of devastation witnessed in West Virginia and elsewhere when drugs and despair take hold…
“Polls regularly demonstrate that the American people overwhelmingly support Senator Manchin’s call for expecting adults to work in exchange for key benefits. A recent focus group showed real people recognize the downsides of removing the work requirement; as one of the participants, 24-year-old Shifa, said: ‘The child tax credit specifically is just going to promote more people to stay at home and not go to work, because they’re getting this free money handed to them.’”
Matt Weidinger, American Enterprise Institute
“The plan also takes the wrong approach to combating climate change. The only way the world’s nations will collectively reduce carbon emissions is if the technology exists to do so in an economically efficient manner. That will require research into breakthroughs such as large batteries that can cheaply store massive amounts of electricity produced by solar, wind or geothermal power…
“Instead of focusing federal subsidies on this type of research, Biden throws money at subsidizing adoption of existing technologies, such as expensive rooftop solar panels or electric vehicles… That bias toward bailing out existing providers is a leitmotif across the package…
“Colleges and universities increase tuition annually and are providing huge salaries to their executives and money managers. The plan proposes to increase Pell Grants and direct payments to these institutions, but they are under no obligation to make their products more affordable. Child-care providers would get massive amounts of cash from the expanded subsidies but face no controls to prevent them from raising prices and reaping the money for themselves. Purchasers of electric vehicles would receive large tax credits, but only if they buy cars built by union workers… this bill is an early Christmas present for interest groups primarily allied with the Democratic Party.”
Henry Olsen, Washington Post
The left is disappointed but generally supports Biden’s framework, arguing that Democrats need to take action.
The left is disappointed but generally supports Biden’s framework, arguing that Democrats need to take action.
“A recent Axios-Ipsos poll showed that 75 percent of Americans favored providing free trade programs or community college… The situation is similar with letting Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll recently showed 83 percent supported this idea… Paid family and medical leave is also an overwhelming consensus issue, according to most polls. An AARP poll showed 75 percent of Americans said they would be more likely to support a politician who voted for requiring paid leave…
“The fact that getting this bill across the line seems to involve shelving some quite-popular policy ideas is certainly a commentary on the tightrope Democrats have had to walk here. These are things that would seem reasonably popular even in a pretty red state like West Virginia — even if the overall price tag of Biden’s proposal might not be. They’re also in many cases… things vulnerable Democrats would very much like to be able to run on in the 2022 midterms. And yet, here we are.”
Aaron Blake, Washington Post
“Progressives have largely been in a state of mourning over the bill’s climate section, ever since the Biden administration dropped its original flagship proposal, the Clean Electricity Performance Program, in the face of opposition from Manchin. But what’s emerged in its place looks impressive…
“To start, there’s the sheer size of the investment: $550 billion to deal with global warming. The money flies in lots of different directions, from green lending to remediation to building out green-tech manufacturing in the U.S. But most importantly, it will fund the full package of tax credits for clean energy development and electric vehicles that climate hawks had been hoping for… As for the rest? To be charitable, you could call it a mixed bag…
“The bit that may get progressives most excited is the extension of the Child Tax Credit… the move could reduce future child poverty by 19 percent… Now the bad stuff: Democrats are about to make massive but only temporary investments in expanding child care, early education, and health insurance in this country, all of which could easily vanish in a few years if Republicans grab control in Washington… it’s essentially an act of faith that somehow these initiatives will be renewed down the line, which is an iffy political calculation that could also have negative policy consequences.”
Jordan Weissmann, Slate
“By zeroing in on those numbers, the public debate seems to have skipped over the economic ramifications of climate change, which promise to be historically disruptive — and enormously expensive. What we don’t spend now will cost us much more later…
“In the more than three decades since Congress held its first major hearing on global warming, the nation has spent nearly $2 trillion sweeping up from disasters, many now believed to have been made worse by climate change. Since 2017, floods, hurricanes and other disasters have cost nearly $700 billion. This year alone has seen 18 disasters causing losses of more than $1 billion each…
“Some economists and climate scientists have calculated that climate change could cost the United States the equivalent of nearly 4 percent of its gross domestic product a year by 2100… When the stakes are viewed this way, investing in defending economic stability seems conservative. Failing to respond to the scientific and economic forecasts is what seems dangerously radical.”
Abrahm Lustgarten, New York Times
