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CBO score says Biden spending bill will add $367B to deficit, without counting IRS tax enforcement

  

Category:  News & Politics

Via:  vic-eldred  •  3 years ago  •  14 comments

By:    Thomas Barrabi

CBO score says Biden spending bill will add $367B to deficit, without counting IRS tax enforcement
The House of Representatives may vote Thursday on President Biden's $1.75 trillion reconciliation spending bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T



The CBO released its full cost estimate on Thursday for President Biden’s social spending bill, dubbed the “Build Back Better Act,” fulfilling a demand from moderate Democrats who wanted more information about the legislation’s long-term financial implications.

"CBO estimates that enacting this legislation would result in a net increase in the deficit totaling $367 billion over the 2022-2031 period, not counting any additional revenue that may be generated by additional funding for tax enforcement," the CBO said in a release.

The Biden administration has argued the cost of the bill’s expansive social and climate programs is fully covered by offsets such as tax hikes on the wealthy and enhanced IRS tax enforcement. The CBO score undermines that position.

The White House has argued its plan for enhanced IRS tax enforcement will generate $400 billion over 10 years, while the CBO previously estimated it would generate about $120 billion in net income.

The score could impact the planned vote on the Democrat-backed bill, which could be brought to the House floor for a vote as soon as Thursday evening.



Pelosi details procedure for Biden spending bill vote




House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Democratic lawmakers detailing what will occur ahead of tonight's planned vote on the spending bill.

Read Pelosi's full message below.

Dear Democratic Colleague, 

This afternoon, work was completed on the Senate privilege scrub, enabling the Rules Committee to call a meeting for 5:30 p.m. to advance the revised Rule with the Manager’s Amendment, which can be viewed here.  Its summary states that it “makes technical changes to narrow U.S. Code citations and references to comply with Senate procedural requirements.” 

At the same time, the Congressional Budget Office has released its figures on the remaining titles of the bill.  An updated chart from the White House, reflecting the revised numbers, will be released, which I will send to you shortly. 

When the Rules Committee reports out the Rule, we will go to the Floor for one hour of debate.  After the vote on the Rule, the remaining 20 minutes of debate on the Build Back Better Act will commence.  

At the close of the debate, all that remains is to take up the vote – so that we can pass this legislation and achieve President Biden’s vision to Build Back Better! 

Build Back Better is a spectacular agenda for the future, with transformational action on health care, family care and climate that will make a significant difference in the lives of millions of Americans, and it is possible because of the leadership of the President.  I am grateful for the outstanding work of the Chairs, Members and staff of our House Democratic Caucus. Thank you for your leadership For The People.



House Rules Committee to meet at 5:30 p.m. ET




The Rules Committee meeting is a key step before a potential vote on Biden's social spending bill, dubbed the "Build Back Better Act."


 


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Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
1  seeder  Vic Eldred    3 years ago

The CBO has released the numbers. Now it's a matter of Pelosi rounding up the votes and sending it to the Senate where there will be changes. Then it will comes back to the house for another vote. If all goes well for the democrats it could be passed in January 2022.

 
 
 
bbl-1
Professor Quiet
2  bbl-1    3 years ago

Hmmm.  $367 billion?  About the same amount the taxpayers were spending in Iraq every six months during the Bush years.  Sounds like a bargain to me and at least gettting something for the money for a change.

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
2.1  seeder  Vic Eldred  replied to  bbl-1 @2    3 years ago

A bargain? 

We shall see what moderate democrats think and when they make their changes, we'll see what the squad thinks.

 
 
 
bbl-1
Professor Quiet
2.1.1  bbl-1  replied to  Vic Eldred @2.1    3 years ago

Nobody wants bargains.  Fix the bridges or don't.

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
2.1.2  seeder  Vic Eldred  replied to  bbl-1 @2.1.1    3 years ago

We might even see a bill that simply does that. Wouldn't that be progress?  To have an infrastructure bill that is confined to infrastructure!

 
 
 
Sean Treacy
Professor Principal
2.1.3  Sean Treacy  replied to  bbl-1 @2.1.1    3 years ago

This is a give away to the rich. This isn't about "bridges".  They just spent 2 trillion to do that. 

 
 
 
bbl-1
Professor Quiet
2.1.4  bbl-1  replied to  Vic Eldred @2.1.2    3 years ago

?

 
 
 
bbl-1
Professor Quiet
2.1.5  bbl-1  replied to  Sean Treacy @2.1.3    3 years ago

Windsor Canadian through the nose.

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
2.1.6  seeder  Vic Eldred  replied to  Sean Treacy @2.1.3    3 years ago

Here's what's in the BBB bill:

Prekindergarten

The framework would provide over $18 billion in the first three years to set up a universal prekindergarten program. After that, the program would be funded with a 90% federal, 10% state split in the fourth year, then 75%-25% in the fifth year and 60%-40% in the sixth year. The program would end after six years.

Child Care

The package attempts to address  shortages in the child care sector  and to raise providers’ wages by spending around $100 billion over three years to build new facilities, train teachers, and subsidize low- and middle-income families’ cost of care. After the first three years, the entitlement expands to nearly all families. It guarantees that no family making less than 250% of their state’s median income would pay more than 7% of their income on child care. Families making less than 75% of their state’s median income would pay nothing. The program ends after six years.

Elder Care

The Democrats’ package devotes $150 billion to providing seniors and disabled Americans more medical care at home, with the aim of shifting treatment away from institutions and hospitals as the population ages.

Proponents said the funding is necessary because adults aged 65 and older get their health coverage through Medicare, which doesn’t pay for daily care at home for those who need help bathing or dressing. It also generally doesn’t cover long-term stays in nursing homes, so many of the 63 million people in the program often use their own money or savings to pay for those services.

Paid Leave

The paid-leave plan, which would cost roughly $200 billion, calls for four weeks of parental, sick or caregiving leave, shorter than the 12 weeks Democrats had initially hoped to include in the package. Under the program, the government would provide Americans a share of their wages while they take leave.

The payments would be scaled based on income, with the average worker receiving about two-thirds of their wages and the lowest-income earners estimated to receive about 90% of their wages. The payments would be capped at $814 a week. The program would start in 2024.

It isn’t clear whether this measure would survive in the Senate. The House will include it in its version of the legislation, but Mr. Manchin has said  he doesn’t favor doing so  in a reconciliation package.

Prescription Drug Pricing

Consumers could see lower costs for some drugs because the legislation for the first time  would empower the federal government to negotiate  for the price of certain medications covered by Medicare. Price negotiation would be allowed starting in 2025 for 10 drugs in which time has elapsed since the drug was first marketed.

The list will increase to 15 drugs in 2026 and 2027, and 20 drugs after that time. Insulin products also must be negotiated.

The drugs  subject to price negotiation  would be those that don’t have competition on the market and that have passed the exclusivity period protecting drugs from generic competition.

The scope of drugs eligible for negotiation is much narrower than a more expansive list wanted by some progressive Democrats and advocacy groups.

The legislation also requires drugmakers to pay a penalty if they are not in compliance with the requirements of the negotiation. They must also pay a penalty in Medicare if prices rise faster than inflation.

Affordable Housing

The House framework includes $150 billion for affordable housing, down from nearly $330 billion in the House Democrats’ original proposal. The  framework released by the White House  would include $65 billion to repair public housing, $25 billion for rental assistance and $15 billion for the Housing Trust Fund, which provides grants to produce affordable housing, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The plan also includes down-payment assistance for first-time home buyers whose parents also don’t own homes.

Immigration

The House framework sets aside $100 billion for  immigration-related provisions , so long as the provisions fall within the Senate’s existing rules for advancing legislation tied to the budget, known as reconciliation.

Democrats are hoping to offer millions of immigrants a temporary form of deportation protection known as parole, which would allow them to work legally in the U.S. and could allow some immigrants with U.S. citizen family members to apply for green cards. Democrats haven’t presented that option yet to the Senate parliamentarian, who determines what’s allowed in reconciliation, Democratic aides familiar with the matter said.

Even if the parliamentarian rules against the parole measure, the money would be spent to improve the immigration system in other ways, Senate aides said. The money could be used to reduce green card and visa backlogs, offer unaccompanied children and other immigrants lawyers for their deportation proceedings, and hire more asylum officers to process migrants’ claims at the border faster.

Corporate Taxes

A 15% corporate minimum tax would affect companies that are profitable but report relatively low tax rates.

U.S.-based multinational companies would face a separate 15% minimum tax on their foreign income. They would pay at least 15% in each country in which they operate, as part of the U.S. participation in an international agreement.

Corporate stock buybacks would face a new 1% excise tax.

Income Taxes for the Wealthy

On individual income taxes, the plan includes a 5% surtax on adjusted gross income above $10 million and an additional 3% on adjusted gross income above $25 million. That would effectively raise the top tax rates on ordinary income and capital gains. Taxing adjusted gross income means that people affected by those surtaxes wouldn’t be able to deduct charitable contributions and state and local taxes.

High-income business owners would face a 3.8% tax on active business income. Currently, levies of that amount are applied on their wages, self-employment income and investment income.

Democrats also plan to roughly double the size of the IRS workforce with an eye toward tougher enforcement of tax laws.

State and Local Taxes

The plan would raise  the $10,000 cap on the state and local deduction  to $80,000, starting in tax year 2021. It would extend that higher cap through 2030, beyond the current cap’s scheduled expiration after 2025, with the cap falling back to $10,000 in 2031. That feature means that the higher taxes in future years would pay for the short-term tax cut, at least in congressional budgeting terms.

Climate

The largest single pot of money in the package, around $555 billion, goes toward climate initiatives. Those include $320 billion in 10-year expanded tax credits for residential and utility-scale renewable energy, transmission, electric vehicles and clean-energy manufacturing; $105 billion to boost resilience to the effects of climate change, such as wildfires and droughts; $110 billion to grow U.S. supply chains for renewable energy technology; and $20 billion to motivate the government to purchase cutting-edge energy technologies.

An ambitious $150 billion carrot-and-stick program intended to move utilities away from fossil fuels toward clean energy sources  was stripped out due to opposition  from Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, whose vote will be essential to passing any Senate version of the bill. The White House says that the measures that stayed in the bill would still help the U.S. cut its carbon emissions by around half by 2030.

The bill also includes a fee on emissions of methane—a gas that traps roughly 85 times more heat than carbon dioxide—as well as funding to help facilities lower methane emissions. Mr. Manchin and some House Democrats have been reluctant to penalize industries that emit methane.

Healthcare

Consumers who get health coverage on the Affordable Care Act exchanges would continue to see lower premiums because the legislation extends more expansive subsidies through 2027. Enhanced subsidies that help offset premiums had been set to expire after 2022.

The changes would mean more people would continue to remain eligible for subsidies and lower-income people would also continue to see more generous subsidies.

The legislation also would limit cost sharing for insulin, before a deductible is applied, to no more than $35 for consumers with private insurance.

The legislation  would also make the subsidies  available from 2022 through 2025 to an estimated 4 million uninsured people in the 12 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid. Providing coverage to this population has been a goal of President Biden’s and the congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses.

Many of the more than 62 million people enrolled in Medicare, which provides coverage for people age 65 and older, would pay less out of pocket for healthcare. The program would for the first time cover hearing care.

The legislation would put a cap on out-of-pocket costs for the voluntary prescription drug benefit, limiting the expenses to $2,000 a year beginning in 2024.

 
 
 
Vic Eldred
Professor Principal
2.1.7  seeder  Vic Eldred  replied to  bbl-1 @2.1.4    3 years ago

Take a look at post 2.1.6

Everyone should

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
2.1.8  XXJefferson51  replied to  Vic Eldred @2.1    3 years ago

Hopefully Manchin and Sinema and maybe Testor will kill this thing dead for good for the good of America.  

 
 
 
XXJefferson51
Senior Guide
2.1.9  XXJefferson51  replied to  Vic Eldred @2.1.7    3 years ago

I did.  Great post and seed.  

 
 
 
TᵢG
Professor Principal
3  TᵢG    3 years ago

I am content with Biden spending his term ensuring the infrastructure bill is executed effectively.   If he focused on getting the nation to a post-pandemic normal, infrastructure and just being presidential then that would be a success in my eyes.

 
 
 
Sean Treacy
Professor Principal
4  Sean Treacy    3 years ago

It's all budget gimmicks even to get the number to 367 billion. If the "temporary" programs are made permanent, the cost to the deficit  goes up to 2.5 trillion. 

 
 

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