Joe Biden's lame duck status

It isn't easy to become a lame duck president in your first year as president. Still, that's a status that Joe Biden has 'achieved' with relative ease. This 'accomplishment' became semi-official when CNN reported that "Senate Democrats are expected to punt consideration of the cornerstone element of President Joe Biden's agenda into next year after private conversations between Biden and the key Democratic holdout made clear the bill would not have the votes to pass this month."

That means that Biden's Build Back Better Bill won't be debated in the Senate this year. Sen. Schumer hoped that Democrats could start work on the Democrats' federalization of elections this month. That won't happen because Kyrsten Sinema won't vote for any changes "to the 60-vote threshold in order to pass elections reform."

Politico is reporting that "Kyrsten Sinema supports the elections reform bill that Democrats are considering a year-end push to pass. She doesn't support a shortcut around the filibuster to get it done." This hurts Democrats in both the short- and medium-term. To be blunt, Democrats aren't the party of ideas. They're the agenda party.

This paragraph, and others like it, need to be corrected immediately:

Critical talks between Biden and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, the Senate's most important swing vote, over how to pass a $1.75 trillion economic and climate package remain far from any resolution on a series of issues, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the discussions.

Last Friday, CBO issued a new score for Biden's Build Back Better Bill. It's based on the fact that Democrats want to make the 17 entitlement programs permanent. When the gimmicks are removed and the real costs are calculated, the 10-year cost of BBB is $5,100,000,000,000. It isn't "$1.75T." During Friday's White House Briefing, Jen Psaki, aka Baghdad Barbara, did her best to knock the new CBO score down. It's hilarious:

The new CBO score isn't fake. The BBB Bill that passed the House is what's fake. Democrats want to make all 17 of those entitlement programs permanent. The bill that passed the House sunsets 3 entitlements after 1 year, 1 entitlement after 2 years and 9 entitlements after 3 years. The 10-year cost for the child-care tax credit costs $1,600,000,000,000 alone:

This needs correcting, too:

Her Democratic colleagues have been discussing those revisions as they weigh dropping their focus on President Joe Biden’s $1.7 trillion climate and social spending bill and pivoting to voting rights, though it’s not clear that avenue will be any more successful.

Again, $1.7 trillion is the gimmick CBO figure. It isn't the real cost figure. There's another part to this. Right now, the House bill has a monstrous-sized tax increase. If BBB were to pass as is, then these programs were made permanent, what additional tax hikes would be required to keep the deficit from exploding?

Joe Biden thought it'd be worth it to try and pass this aggressive package. That was foolish. The numbers just weren't there. Passing major legislative packages with a 5-seat majority in the House and a 50-50 Senate just wasn't realistic. Now that his legislative agenda has gone up in flames, Joe Biden can get his mid-afternoon naps in knowing that he's a lame duck president.