CBO said on Thursday evening that Biden’s climate change and social policy package would increase the federal budget deficit by $160 billion over the next 10 years.

It seems that House Democrats are undeterred by this finding. It “is unlikely to stop House Democrats from approving the bill as soon as Thursday evening.”



This may not sound so dramatic, but if they pass it as is, the situation could be disastrous for the Democrats in two ways:

1. The Republicans have yet another reason to accuse Biden of being weak and ineffectual because he promised that this bill would be fully funded. Chop a few more points off that sinking approval rating.

2. The bill can’t pass the Senate in that form because Manchin specifically said he won’t add to the deficit. This means that the negotiations and squabbling will begin all over again, with the Democrats continuing to show the nation’s undecided and independent voters that they are just going to keep jabbering about this bill, and can’t get their act together.

As this independent looks at it, I’m looking at a choice between the party that wants to bring a copy of Balzac to a gunfight, and the party that wants to bring an AK-47 to a book discussion club.

22 thoughts on “CBO said on Thursday evening that Biden’s climate change and social policy package would increase the federal budget deficit by $160 billion over the next 10 years.

  1. The way the GOP only seems to care about deficits when Democrats are in power is extremely frustrating and infuriating. But just because their concern is hypocritical doesn’t mean the concern is unfounded.

    As I understand it, the BBB CBO score is counting on bringing in an extra $200 billion by cracking down on tax cheats. Maybe they will be able to do that, but I find it reminiscent of all the politicians over the years that promised to bring down deficits by cracking down on waste, fraud, and abuse. Those savings never seem to materialize.

    1. They both bitch about each other’s spending, deficits, and debt when they’re out of power but become remarkably tolerant of their own when they’re in.

      1. Difference being when Democrats spend, it might (I say might) actually be on something useful. Rs spend on CEOs and Scrooge McDuck types getting a foot deeper gold coins in their swimming pools. And bombs – ridiculously expensive nukes that no sane person would use.

        1. Reagan’s spending may well have caused the Evil Empire to implode. Navies are damned expensive things (ask Pericles or Kaiser Bill or particularly Brezhnev). And he did sporadically keep an eye on the deficit. Bush 1 tried to be fiscally responsible and got primaried. Bush 2 could at least claim he was funding an (ill-advised) war. Trump – no fucking excuse whatsoever. “It is glorious to grow richer”.
          The last real fiscally responsible President was Clinton. Obama could at least claim the stimulus helped recovery from 2008, along with the TARP program. Biden’s Build etc has some stuff I like, probably more I don’t. But since the soak the rich tax isn’t going anywhere, it’ll be debt-funded.
          One other bad legacy of Trump is going to be what practically became a clampdown on all immigration. Declining birth rate, lower ratio between active workers and payees from the Federal trust funds= problems down the road. Not only are those brown, yellow, and black sorts shut out but the Norwegians Trump favors wouldn’t come here if you paid them.

          1. I think Bill Clinton was kind of fiscally responsible because of circumstances rather than temperament or ideology. When the GOP first captured Congress, it held the line on spending. There was also a great deal of economic growth that resulted from the productivity gains made possible by the growth of PCs and the Internet. Suddenly the budget was balanced. I don’t remember reading many predictions that the budget would balance before it happened. That was probably the last time congressional Republicans were fiscally responsible.

          2. It was Bill Clinton and the Congressional Democrats and their 1993 budget that led to the balanced budget. Not a single Republican voted for the 1993 budget. The only credit the Republicans deserve is that George H W Bush along with the Congressional Democratic leadership and with the votes of some Republicans passed a prior deficit reduction package.

            Other than that, the Republicans, especially the Republicans of Newt Gingrich deserve ZERO credit for balancing the budget in the 1990s.

            When George W Bush was selected President, the Republicans still had the majority in Congress and they took ‘surpluses as far as the eye can see’ and turned them into deficits as far as the eye can see.

            That they lie that they deserve credit for the surplus and that their useless idiots like Michael McChesney fall for it tells everybody all they need to know about Republicans and Michael McChesney.

    1. I think you need to move the decimal point.

      .016 trillion = 16 billion.

      (s/b .16 trillion, about 1/6 of a trillion, 160 billion)

      But your point remains valid.

  2. If only we had a way to increase revenue, and an entire income-class who are chronically under-taxed. Oh well. Just like every other problem that the US faces that other Western societies have solved, it’s simply an impossible problem with no solution. If you worship at the alter of the ultra rich, that is.

  3. It goes like this.

    The democrats will continue to lose as long as they continue to let the Republicans own the narrative.

    The gop added how much to the deficit during Trump? Time to play a round of whataboutism. It’s a terrible game, but there’s nothing to do but shut them up by throwing it into their face.

    As for Manchin, it’s time to play hardball. He can’t remain emperor. Throw him out of the party. Do what needs to be done to evict him from the emperor’s chair. He’s running the nation at this point and a bunch of goat humping mutants in the most backwater state we’ve got elected him. That has to end. Stop playing nice nice and call him a republican to his face, on the floor. On the cameras. It’s clear the game he’s playing. You’ll never win him. So stop. You’re handing them the narrative. Stop making nice. Make it 100% clear what’s going on.

    The GOP represent a treasonous rebel who is just itching for his chance to try to take over the government again. That is what drives the complete obstruction. That is what drives the unwillingness to bend. Manchin is their puppet. If he isn’t, it’s time for him to put his money where his mouth is, and remove it from Trump’s ass.

    Piss them off. What can it hurt? They can’t do any worse! At least speak some truth! Being the nice guy is getting us nowhere here. Manchin runs the country while Mccarthy and Cruz giggle like schoolboys behind his back waiting for the chance to hand Trump his crown.

    Fuck every one is those guys. If the Biden admin doesn’t want to go down in flames as Carter 2.0, it’s time to start swinging.

    1. Your mouth to Chuck Schumer’s ears. I agree completely that Joe Manchin should be kicked out of the Democratic Party and FORCED to become a Republican. That will teach Mitch McConnell a lesson.

    2. Throw him out of the party and let Moscow Mitch control the Senate again? I don’t think so. It will happen soon enough in the next election cycle.

      (I’m not sure McConnell will ever be majority leader again. He doesn’t really get along with Mr. Orange. Trump will probably encourage the Trump Party to go with a Trumpier candidate.)

      1. I remember reading comments on the Huffington Post the last time the Democrats controlled the Senate by one vote. Back then, lots of people on the left were upset with Joe Lieberman for running and winning as an independent after losing the Dem primary. Lots of people were calling for him to be stripped of his committee chairmanship. That was a completely idiotic position for a Democrat to hold, because the only reasons the Dems were in control was because Lieberman was caucusing with the Democrats. Kicking him out would only return the senate to the GOP. Manchin never even lost a primary. I don’t know if Manchin is planning to run for reelection, but there are lots of calls to primary him. Democrats would be fools to nominate a more liberal candidate. It would be even more foolish than the time the Republicans chose a witch to run for the senate instead of popular former governor. That’s because Manchin is probably the only Democrat that could win a Senate election. No one to his left would have a chance. Manchin may be frustrating a lot of Democrats, but they should try and understand that if he was someone that would just vote out of party loyalty, he would not be in the senate today and Mitch McConnell would be majority leader.

    3. I don’t think that would be effective. I saw the brief House leadership press conference after the House passage of this Build Back Better passage, and I think Nancy Pelosi definitely ‘gets it’ in terms of at least some of the necessary messaging. The first question she received was about the Republican criticism of adding to the deficit and she outright replied (not the exact wording) ‘the Republican Party added over $2 trillion to the deficit with their tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations that had no ‘pay go.’ They aren’t a serious or credible party and I’m not going to answer any question that uses these dishonest Republican frames.’

      I also find it interesting those who regard Nancy Pelosi as out of touch or as ‘geriatric.’ She, like all humans is imperfect, and she has blindspots but she is a legislative genius and master tactician. Similarly in the debate on the motion to censure Republican psychopath (increasingly redundant) Paul Gosar, 80 year old or so House Majority leader Steny Hoyer gave a brilliant and articulate summation of the current mood of the nation. To be sure, he read a few quotes and was constantly leafing through papers, but that speech was obviously not rehearsed or written for him.

      Finally, President Biden can be inarticulate at times, mostly it seems due to his stuttering and the aneuryisms he suffered in 1988, but, for instance, Bob Woodward said that as President, Joe Biden is referred to as the ‘question man’ due to the number of difficult questions he asks his senior staff about policy.

      The lazy and stupid jokes that these individuals, due to their advanced age, must be suffering dementia or are out of touch or not living in modern times are simply wrong. President Biden is far more aware of reality than the idiot Republican posters here, and Nancy Pelosi runs tactical rings around Senator McConnell (R-China and Russia) and House Minority Leader Joe ‘Kevin’ McCarthy.

      Finally, I saw that Ohio Republicans, despite Ohio voters having passed a referendum on a nonpartisan redistrictricting commission, are about to pass a very gerrymandered Congressional map. I hope that California Democrats study the Ohio Republican legal reasoning and draw a similar highly partisan Congressional map. My understanding is that Democrats could write maps in California that would make the Congressional Delegation 52-0 Democratic. Among other things, that would take Republican Joe ‘Kevin’ McCarthy right out of Congress.

  4. Hmmmm. If they eliminated the SALT tax cut that they included the Build Back Better bill, they would have a deficit reduction of $125 billion instead of an increase. The whole thing is a joke. Even the good ideas are a joke.

    Look at the infrastructure bill, the jobs needed to do it are 80 or 90% jobs that nobody wants and that require skilled labor. We are already unable to hire those employees.

    No matter the pay right now you can’t hire skilled trades, most business are trying to hire and have no applicants. Even unskilled labor is hard to find. But skilled is about impossible, All the building trades, truckers, manufacturing personnel, Teachers, etc.… Plus, we are critically short of doctors, nurses, and such. So, who’s going to do all this extra work? It’s only going to cause more inflation as it’s going to be harder to get workers to make anything or provide any service. We can’t get the supplies or workers we need to build existing orders/needs. Cost of everything is up and materials have skyrocketed. Across many industries things are being scheduled years in the future. (Can’t get a new roof on my building for two years at least.)

    So where is all the material that we need to build this infrastructure going to come from? Many of our plants are already at capacity and can’t get supplies or find employees to meet let alone increase production? So, we build more plants to increase production? Who’s going to build the plants, hospitals, housing, schools? All constructions firms I know of are booked for years. Overbooked actually and can’t find enough skilled staff to meet current schedule. No one can get the equipment they need. And as for personnel, the folks graduating today don’t want these types of jobs. They want to work from home or work in tech. or be influencers. Are we going to force people to take these jobs? And many, if not most of the jobs that are needed are skilled. So, they require more than a little training, experience, and an aptitude. Who’s going train to do it?

    Same with Doctors and Nurses. We are losing them at record pace. And over a million of them are going to be retiring over the next several years even without covid burnout. There just isn’t enough in school to even keep up with the current need, let alone the new needs. And if we could find people that what these jobs who is going to teach them? There are capacity limits on all of this, and we are at the limits on many across the board. It would be incredible if we could blink our eyes and make all this stuff, but we can’t. And unfortunately throwing more money at it is not going to do anything but make a lot of corrupt people richer on both sides and inflation is going to be wipe and any wage increases.

    All theory must be tempered in some reality. We have a serious problem. If any of Trump’s peeps survive COVID they at least can drive trucks, heavy equipment and keep our old cars running if we can get the parts.

    1. Ah, the “we have no workers” myth.

      Were they abducted by aliens?

      Or maybe the culture just finally adjusted in the absence of government action and you’ve got a quiet revolution where people aren’t going to work most jobs for less than they’re due? Because, I’m a Lyft driver, talk to a lot of people, and that’s what every last one of them say to me. All of them. “I’m not getting yelled at by some asshole with the virus for $10 an hour, part time.”

      Companies are still refusing to pay what workers want. So lookie there, “nobody wants to work”.

      Except that companies that do pay enough, they’re fully staffed. Funny how they found those missing workers. They must have a better magnifying glass and flashlight.

      1. It’s not a ‘we have no workers’ myth, there is a genuine mismatch between the skills of the unemployed/underemployed and some of those looking to change jobs, and the skills required of many of the jobs available. This is a problem in many countries, not just the United States. In the United States this is exacerbated by the high cost of advanced education and the lack of tradition of apprenticeships.

        Many businesses seem to be addressing this by promoting certifications for skills rather than degrees. If colleges/universities price themselves out of the market it will be their own failure. Not to get sidetracked here on this, but while the high cost of colleges seems to have multiple factors, some of which seem to be demanded by the student body, like ‘diversity officers’, other things like raising costs by forcing students to take unnecessary prerequisites in the interest of demanding that students graduate with a full ‘liberal arts’ background, are the arrogance of institutions that knew they lacked competition.

        In the specific situation here of construction workers, I don’t know what’s going on in Mexico, and I don’t know how Americans would react to Mexicans taking ‘their construction jobs’ but there is a large pool of highly skilled construction workers in Mexico.

        ‘Some guy named Manuel Labor took my job!’ 🙂

  5. You know when Democrats are in power when Republicans pretend to give a shit about the deficit.

  6. Your last paragraph is an apt analogy.

    I’ll reply as I always do these times.

    “Pete, the personal rancor reflected in that remark I don’t intend to dignify with comment. But I would like to address your general attitude of hopeless negativism. Consider the lilies of the goddamn field or… hell! Take at look at Delmar here as your paradigm of hope.”

  7. From my warped perspective it somehow sounds like Kerensky vs. the Bolshies.
    It’s 48-51-1. The VP is irrelevant. Wake up tools!
    Like the Spanberger said, America didn’t elect Biden to be FDR.
    And there’s a certain gang of four that Biden owes nothing to after they damn near scuttled the infrastructure bill.

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