Build Back Better: Taxes, Technology, and Cybersecurity

The latest in a series.

By , and
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Good afternoon. We hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.

Congress is back this week with a full schedule: A government shutdown deadline is on Friday, members will have to address the debt ceiling this month, and Democrats are debating how to proceed with President Joe Biden’s agenda.

The Uphill team has been slogging through the legislative text of the House-passed Build Back Better Act to deliver a more detailed breakdown of the notable spending items and programs included in the legislation. We covered its climate provisions here, its health care and housing provisions here, and its immigration and family policies here. Today, we have a bit of a grab-bag of sections. It’s not the most exhilarating reading, but we think it’s important to look at the details. (Hopefully we’ll be able to wrap up this series with only one more edition like this.) We primarily relied on the full text of the bill, which is available here, and a section-by-section summary available here.

​​Minimum tax: Build Back Better includes legal changes to implement the United States’ role in an international agreement between nearly 140 countries on how multinational corporations should be taxed.

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Comments (23)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “ The legislation imposes a 1 percent tax on corporate stock buybacks.”

    I actually might support that. Buybacks are a pet peeve of mine. Put that money into R and D instead.

    “ It levies new taxes on nicotine, amounting to $50.33 per 1,810 milligrams of nicotine in a given product. ”

    On the other hand, this is a terrible idea. It’s 2021, and a whole new year for substances to be IN or OUT. Guess what the latest health craze is? Nicotine! Not tobacco. The gum that Jonah advertises. Tobacco contains 69 carcinogens. But nicotine isn’t one of them…

    I have to issue Jonah’s warning: “Nicotine is an addictive chemical. This is true.” However it apparently has health benefits too. I’m not volunteering to test that anytime soon though.

    “ Next generation 9-1-1:”

    I’m intrigued by this.

    “ The secretary of commerce would receive $7 million to create a 14-member council that will recommend to Congress ways to develop and adopt advanced technologies such as 6G. ”

    500k per person… and wait, 6G? Does Congress even have 3G?

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  2. learnin4life

    Thank you for the insight! Always top notch.

    As I think about taxes and spending it would be very helpful to me to understand more about what conservatives support in terms of our present suite of government spending for social programs. Clearly, the philosophy behind funding such programs differs from that of liberals. The loud partisan voices on both sides tend to drown out any existing advocacy for programs that a majority of conservatives believe should continue at existing levels or expand. I could perhaps analyze the roll call votes for all social program funding that has come up in the last several congresses and deduce from Republican votes which earned a yea vote, but would prefer gaining insight from a less granular approach. Given the caprice of individual motivation on specific proposals it's unlikely that method would glean valid insights.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Ben Connelly

      So I’m going to say that it differs depending on which conservative you ask. Especially as the definition of “conservative” is shifting in this nationalist-populist moment (see outlets such as - checks notes - The American Conservative promoting what some might consider to be socialist policies).

      Speaking for me: I tend to lean libertarian and I’d prefer close to zero government spending or regulation or control/influence in most sectors of the economy. That’s pretty extreme and not representative of the broader movement. I’m also not foolish enough to think it remotely likely: we work within the system we have. Most conservatives would also probably be less laissez faire than me.

      However there’s a fair amount of agreement that at least the current levels of spending, operation of social programs, and manner and oversight of spending (among other things) are problems (if there’s not as much agreement on solutions). To take one example: the national debt and the deficit that drives it. Unless you believe in MMT, you have to realize that at some point this could be a huge liability, perhaps even a black swan greater than 2008 and the coronavirus pandemic. At the very least, it’s a problem.

      We cannot continue spending and borrowing at the levels we currently are.

      Next, Social Security and Medicare are about to go bankrupt in the next decade or so. We need some sort of reform. This doesn’t mean “throwing old people out on the streets,” or anything, but it does mean being serious about how we can at least make these programs financially solvent (speaking for myself, I would eliminate them entirely, but I’m not winning any votes on that platform).

      Also, we need a conversation about oversight of spending. Do programs just continue indefinitely? Who controls/manages them? Lawmakers? Where is the consent of the governed if lawmakers have little say and unelected bureaucrats have all the say? It shouldn’t be this hard to reform programs down the line when they run into trouble.

      Finally (since this comment is getting long), a general comment about the bill and about our spending priorities in general: what problems are best solved/can actually be solved by government spending? Which are best left up to the market and private institutions? Are some of them not problems that spending money can easily solve? It sounds great to throw money at Something Good, but how do we know we’re actually achieving the outcome we desire? These are conversations we need to be having.

      Anyway, I’ve ranted at length. Take it for what you will. I’m just one random guy. Jonah or David or Steve or Yuval Levin are the people to ask.

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      1. learnin4life

        Thank you for taking the time to delve into the conundrum that is our modern society, and sharing your perspective on different topics. As a retiree of some, but not excessive means, I appreciate that you won't be throwing older people into the streets. A tactic that could be difficult to explain to those who would be thrown.

        You raise good questions that deserve thoughtful attention from both parties. In particular, whether a problem can or should be addressed with money, and if so how would success be measured. The likelihood these questions will see light in our current political climate is zilch. One thing that always intrigued me was the idea of a Dem program that was the product of bipartisan compromise, and overseen by Repubs for compliance and performance in relation to objectives. Maybe the Senate BIF that recently passed the House will afford an opportunity to see something akin to this unicorn.

        I'll keep my eyes open for examples of Repub initiated social programs.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Ben Connelly

          Thanks. Yes if there’s one thing that there can be bipartisan consensus on it’s that politicians will probably continue to kick the can down the road and avoid answering any hard questions. If you’re just looking in general for just Republican-initiated social programs, you could look at proposed but not enacted ones, like Romney’s child tax credit plan this past February. Not sure if that counts.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Dpatricola

    Subscribing alone is worth the effort your team puts into dissecting these tomes of legislation.

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  4. Avatar photo
    Alain

    More money for the IRS, now there's something all Americans can get behind...

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    1. Avatar photo
      Dpatricola

      I think this is long overdue. The GOP love railing against taxes in general but what good is a country that cannot collect what it needs or estimates?

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      1. Avatar photo
        Alain

        In theory funding the IRS to go after tax cheats sounds like a great idea but in practice whats going to happen is that you fund this agency, they staff up, they go after rich people and corporations, these people have the means to put up a formidable fight so the staff starts going for easier prey and now they are harassing small business owners and middle class people.

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  5. Avatar photo
    JohnM.

    Thank you all for doing the heavy lifting for us. I really appreciate it! All I can say is God preserve Joe Manchin & Kirsten Sinema.

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  6. Dylan Paul

    Thanks for doing this sort of work! A rare sight in political journalism.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Frank Lee

    "Build Back Better" is the chant of the collectivist globalists... the Klaus Schwabb disciples (yuk... another German intent on taking control of the world). It represents an illiberal agenda.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Paul Britton

    Just awful! (Not the article — it’s excellent, thanks, guys — but all the wasted money and governmental overreach in the bill.)

    I don’t know of more than a handful of things in the whole bill that seem even remotely like a good idea to me.

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  9. Avatar photo
    William Miller

    The thing that irks/worries me the most about provisions of bills like this is that they mess with existing retirement plans. Any time they do it, it makes me worry about a future risk that they could just call a "do-over" on all Roth accounts and say "nevermind, distributions from those accounts are going to be taxed after all".

    That risk is part of a reason that I've put together a strategy for my accounts that has some in "traditional" accounts and some in ones with "Roth" provisions. So I'm also ticked specifically at the parts of this bill that put new restrictions on Roth conversions on both before-tax and after-tax traditional retirement plans.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Frank Lee

      Makes sense if you get their true intentions to destroy individual independence and replace it with complete dependence on government and the billionaire boys club that runs it.

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    2. Avatar photo
      Paul Britton

      It astonishes me how the high-tax, big-government party is always shocked and offended when taxpayers take note of what’s taxed and what isn’t and behave accordingly.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Jack

    HEY THE DISPATCH PLEASE READ THIS!
    There’s a ballot initiative going around in Missouri to use a voting system similar to Alaska’s in all state elections and elections to the U.S. Congress. I hope there’s something about it in tomorrow’s TMD.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Jack

      Because I’m also obsessed with Ranked-choice-voting.

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