Burying Joe Biden's Build Back Better Bill
First, let's look at the opening paragraph of Kudlow's riff. He opens with his old reliable of "Save America. Kill the Bill. That prospect is looking better and better. You recall Friday two game-changing numbers that may well have dealt the Biden plan for big government socialism a one, two death punch."
Then he transitions into saying "First, the 6.9% consumer price index showed inflation is not 'transitory' and we sure don't need any more government spending. Second, the CBO gave a realistic scoring of the Biden monstrosity by making new entitlement permanent over 10 years or more, rather than the phony gimmick of 'sunsetting' after one year to hide the humongous cost."
Next, Kudlow reminds his audience of a foundational truth:
Actually, the CBO is correctly capturing Biden's policy intent, because he's always talking about his 'transformational' plan. Transformation doesn't mean one year and out. It means permanent. And that's what CBO's new score captures. So transformational permanent translates to $5 trillion in more spending and $3 trillion in a larger deficit.Finally, Kudlow quotes Ms. Yellen:
"And, there are policies that the president proposed as permanent and that, to achieve consensus, are now temporary in the legislation." Let me repeat. She said, "the president proposed permanent, now temporary."
Ms. Yellen has quite the tightrope to navigate. According to this article, she said "In her letter, Yellen wrote that because Biden has promised to pay for any prospective extension of programs under the current version of the BBB bill, 'it is inappropriate to judge this legislation based on an assumption that future acts of Congress won't be paid for.'" Then she added this:
"Tomorrow, the Congressional Budget Office is expected to release its analysis," Yellen wrote. "To be clear, this should not be confused with a score of the Build Back Better Act, which was already released. Instead, this analysis is of a bill that the House did not pass, the Senate is not considering, and the President, who has committed to paying for permanent investment, would not sign."QUESTIONS FOR MS. YELLEN:
- How can legislation be transformational if most of its new programs expire after 3 years?
- Isn't it true that Biden simply wants to get these 17 programs started, then never get rid of them?
- Since this bill was mostly written by Bernie Sanders and Sanders has said that $3,500,000,000,000 was already a compromise, why shouldn't we think that $1,750,000,000,000 is a gimmick-filled bill to entice Joe Manchin to vote for Biden's Build Back Better Bill?
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