The Democrats’ Budget: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – New York Sun

In Washington, the conversation about infrastructure and budget reconciliation is running hot and heavy the good, the bad and the ugly. Right now nothing is completely clear. Not the outcomes, not the spending, not the scoring, not even the taxing.

Let me tell you, though, theres going to be plenty of spending, plenty of taxing, and unfortunately plenty of weird scoring. The infrastructure story could rest on tax scoring by the Congressional Budget office and the Joint Tax Committee. A lot of Republicans are waiting for the official numbers.

According to the Website of the Hill, the Joint Committee on Taxation issued a report Monday saying that the bipartisan infrastructure deal would raise only $51 billion dollars in new tax revenues over the next 10 years. A fraction of the $550 billion in proposed new spending. $51 billion is a bad number for this deal.

Now, up to $300 billion could come from repurposing unused Covid money. The rest of it could be a day in the country, or should I say a day lost in the country's deep woods. Part of the good news of infrastructure is there's no phony IRS tax gap and no corporate income tax hikes. Also no infrastructure bank.

The bipartisan group will not pay for infrastructure with dynamic scoring or ending Medicare rebates, or imposing drug price controls, or $30 billion of a crypto-currency tax. So they look revenue short to me right now of about $100 billion dollars.

That means that Republican support is by no means a given. My biggest concern is still the budget reconciliation package. This is the taxing, spending, entitling, greening, transformational, workers paradise utopia for which the left-wing Democratic progressives yearn. It will all be jammed into the reconciliation bill.

Amnesty for illegals might be part of it. Banning voter photo IDs could be part of it. Theres no telling. For those of us who do not wish to transform America into a woke driven exercise in central planning, regulating, critical race theory, cancel culture, end-free-enterprise vision, I think of it as Bulgaria before the Berlin Wall came down.

This proposed bill must be stopped. It is the number one priority for people of all stripes who love this country and want to save it. Whatever the Democrats fail to win in infrastructure, theyre going to try to jam it into reconciliation. Part of the bad of infrastructure is its Green New Dealness. Which covers about $140 billion dollars or roughly one quarter of the bipartisan package.

There will be subsidies for everything remotely related to green including changing the electricity power grid, boosting electric vehicle car sales, financing electricity pumps, aka electric charging stations. According to some conservative friends the word equity appears 64 times in this 2,700 page infrastructure bill.

In other words, equal opportunity at the starting line is not enough anymore. We need equality at the finish line. If not equity unfortunately based on gender, race, and other identity groups then federal subsidies will flow galore. I don't like any of that. Its saying, you cant buy me off, but you could temporarily rent me if you give me a free Tesla.

Which is kind of what they're doing with free everything that is green. Im joking here but not entirely. So theres the good, the bad, and the ugly on infrastructure. As far as the budget reconciliation package is concerned, though, there is nothing good. Its all bad. And it's getting more and more ugly.

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The Democrats' Budget: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - New York Sun