Trillions and Trillions
After spending months trying to cobble together enough votes to pass individual pieces of their expensive agenda, congressional Democrats have decided to throw caution to the wind and buy a ticket for the full jackpot.
They have announced an agreement on a budget resolution that includes $3.5 trillion in reconciliation instructions for new tax and entitlement changes. This is in addition to the infrastructure deal being negotiated with Senate Republicans that would include $600 billion in new spending, and an 8.4 percent discretionary spending increase that would raise the spending baseline and thus likely cost $1 trillion over the decade. Another $1 trillion would come from renewing policies that currently use fake expiration dates to hide their long-term cost (after all, no one believes lawmakers will actually allow the child tax credit expansions to expire).
Add it all up, and the Democrats are laying the groundwork to add $6.1 trillion in new spending and tax credits. Including the mostly unnecessary $1.9 trillion “stimulus” bill enacted just four months ago would bring the 2021 binge to a historic $8 trillion over the next decade.
How much is $8 trillion? Enough for Washington to deposit $60,000 into each family’s bank account. Or permanently eliminate the employee side of the payroll tax. Or permanently cut income taxes by one-third. Instead, if Democrats have their way, it will go to a grab bag of expensive government expansions.
