At The American Prospect David Dayen asks a reasonable enough question. Will the “Build Back Better” bill actually build back better? What if it’s worse?
I find it hard to muster up much energy for Build Back Better right now, though this is likely the low point in the negotiations. Maybe something like a compromise that sets apart tax cuts from spending can be reached, with more money available to execute the remaining programs correctly. But that’s a faint glimmer of hope. The Manchin path is one that Builds Back Worse, on long-standing issues on which we cannot afford to skimp.
In a similar vein but with a largely opposite thrust John Cochrane dares to go where no one has gone before and actually reads the childcare portion of the bill. His conclusion?
So what will all this do? I’ll hazard a forecast. This will create a big state bureaucracy. The majority of child-care operators, especially those who work for actual poor and disadvantaged people, in poor and disadvantaged areas, will look at this mess and say no thanks, we don’t take federal money. (All of these are couched as requirements conditioned on receiving federal funds, as they must be given what’s left of the commerce clause.) They take cash, hire who they want, and operate under the current slightly less restrictive set of rules. Or, they operate underground. As the wealthy send their kids to private schools, they send their kids to high cost private day care also outside the system to avoid price caps.
The US creates one more of thousands of programs with take-up rates in the low single digits. Politicians get to feel good about offering child care, without actually doing it. Costs of the official programs balloon. But overall costs may not end up that large, because it reaches so few people. On the margin, though, a few more people work less, to avoid losing benefits, to avoid losing coveted spots in half decent child care facilities, and a few less people get married.
or, said another way, that provision might well be named “No Bureaucrat Left Behind”.
Taken together these two posts highlight the paradox of these large spending bills. The individual components are poorly constructed, overly expensive, and with lots of obvious adverse run-on effects. But as you peel away the layers one by one activist support for the measures wanes.
The ultimate purpose of the Biden policies, under his administration, is to create one massive federal bureaucracy for all. The middle class will be squeezed out. The poor dependent on their “master,†the centralized government. And, power will be held by a relatively rich few – much like today’s newspapers (90%) are run by 6 corporations.
I will go on and predict that many people will no longer vote strictly Democrat or Republican. These two parties have mainly evolved into the Dems becoming social progressive Marxists, and the republicans really standing for nothing. Instead, elections will be between Marxism and Populism – the policies espoused and then implemented by them when they take the reins of commanding power. Already independents, in one poll, give Biden only a 28% approval rating, indicating the displeasure this important political demographic attributes to his “vision†– CRT in schools, mass vaccinations (medical tyranny) including young children, huge layers of impending debt, broken borders, dangerous foreign policy decisions – all only getting worse and more mismanaged by the day.
A new term I heard today, along side the “FJB†and “Let’s Go Brandon†chants, is a “Bidexit†drive, similar to what started in the UK as “Brexit.†Like the UK, small groups of people are meeting around the country trying to thwart the terrible policies Biden is attempting to thrust on them. The discontent is only growing, with greater numbers throwing off the shackles of silence and becoming more provocative, more active, and more verbal in their protests. Hopefully, their protests will turn into votes against this oppressive government.
“Build Back Better” is breezy and lightweight.