Tag Archives: Build Back Better Bill

I Wondered About This When He Said It

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There were a lot of misleading statements in the State of the Union address on Tuesday. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal posted an article about one of these statements.

The article reports:

Presidents typically embellish their achievements during their State of the Union addresses, but President Biden’s pose as a budget deficit hawk is one for the ages.

“By the end of this year, the deficit will be down to less than half what it was before I took office,” he said, adding that he will be “the only President ever to cut the deficit by more than one trillion dollars in a single year.”

That’s not by choice.

The article notes:

This assumes Congress doesn’t enact his Build Back Better plan or the more Covid relief he’s asking for.

He’s also using the fiscal 2020 budget as his benchmark. Congress passed $2 trillion in Covid relief in March 2020 to prevent a recession. Both parties piled on $900 billion more that December, and Democrats in March 2021 ladled out nearly $2 trillion more. The deficit is declining because Congress blew it out for two years.

…Inflation is always good for government coffers. Receipts are up 28% during the first four months of this fiscal year. But the Congressional Budget Office still projects deficits to exceed $1 trillion on average over the next decade.

The article concludes:

Mr. Biden is hoping the deficit reduction ruse will lure West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin to go along with more spending. Don’t fall for it, sir.

Remember, statistics can pretty much be manipulated to say anything a statistician wants them to say. President Biden evidently has some good statisticians in his speech writing department.

It’s Not Dead Yet

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On Sunday, Breitbart reported that the White House and Senator Joe Manchin have resumed discussions of the “Build Back Better” Bill (also known as the Build Back Broke Bill).

The article reports:

According to Axios, sources confirmed that the senator has reportedly engaged with the White House “on the climate and child care provisions” in the president’s signature piece of legislation “if the White House removes the enhanced child tax credit from the $1.75 trillion package — or dramatically lowers the income caps for eligible families.”

The article concludes:

“The fight for Build Back Better is too important to give up,” press secretary Jen Psaki said. “We will find a way to move forward next year.”

Senate Democrats have reportedly doubled their efforts to get Manchin on board with the bill, believing its passage will improve their chances in the 2022 midterm elections.

“The Senate Democratic Caucus sees salvaging the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better package as key to boosting the party’s chances in this fall’s midterms, especially as President Biden’s popularity sags in the polls,” said Axios in a separate report.

One senior Senate Democrat aide said the holidays likely cooled everyone off, allowing for more negotiations to proceed.

Senator Manchin has claimed that his objection to the bill is that it will fuel inflation (which it will). The article noted that last months inflation reading from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was 6.8 for the year. The next Consumer Price Index will come out on January 12.

According to the CPI Inflation Calculator:

Elections matter.

 

 

The Perfect Comeback

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I am not ready to say that Senator Manchin has killed the Build Back Better Bill. That remains to be seen. He has at least killed it until after Christmas. However, President Biden does not seem to be dealing with the possibility that the bill might be dead.

On Friday, Red State posted an article about a statement released by the White House regarding the Build Back Better Bill.

The article reports:

Neither the media nor Joe Biden seems to be able to deal with the simple fact that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has always been clear that he had issues with the Build Back Better (BBB) bill, from various provisions to the price tag of the whole monstrosity.

As we noted earlier, the AP chastised Manchin, claiming he was the “single senator” standing in the way of the Biden Administration’s grand plans. How to have bias and untruth there, all wrapped up in a fake news package. Then CNN analyst Kirsten Powers suggested it would be better for Joe Biden if Manchin left the Democrats so that Biden wouldn’t be blamed for not uniting all the Democrats — a truly strange take, and not ultimately helpful to the Democrats.

But the worst reaction was that of Joe Biden himself. The BBB imploded after the CBO score came in and laid out how much the true cost of the bill would be with all the social programs properly scored out over 10 years. It wasn’t even close to the number that Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been pitching of around $1.75 trillion. Manchin said that was “very sobering,” and the reports were that he and Biden were far apart. That’s what resulted in the BBB being put off and essentially killed.

Now, Biden has released a statement where he mentions Manchin three times and falsely claims that Manchin had agreed with him on a number.

The article quotes some of President Biden’s statement:

‘In these discussions, Senator Manchin has reiterated his support for Build Back Better funding at the level of the framework plan I announced in September,’ he said.

‘I believe that we will bridge our differences and advance the Build Back Better plan, even in the face of fierce Republican opposition.’

The article also quotes Senator Manchin’s response:

Manchin is a very genteel fellow, but his response to Biden’s statement, for him, seemed perturbed. “The president put out a statement. It’s his statement, not mine,” Manchin said. That’s probably as close as Manchin will politely come to calling Joe Biden a liar. It also is a comment as to where they are at this point — which is not anywhere close to an agreement.

Let’s hope Senator Manchin continues to hold his ground as the media and the Democrats trash him for doing the right thing.

When The Numbers Do Not Align With The Words

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On Sunday, The Blaze posted an article about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. At the time the tax cut was passed, Democrats loudly professed that the bill was only ‘tax cuts for the rich.’ The article illustrates the fallacy of that claim by reporting actual numbers. You can follow the link above to the article to read some of the ridiculous claims made by Democrat leaders.

After detailing some of the claims made by leading Democrats, the article reports:

However, new analysis shows the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts benefited middle-income and working-class Americans the most. The Heartland Institute — a free-market think tank — analyzed data from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The analysis declared that assertions made by Democrats about the GOP’s tax cut law were incorrect.

The Heartland Institute examined IRS data from 2017 to 2018, the first year the tax cuts went into effect.

“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced average effective income tax rates for filers in every one of the IRS’s income brackets, with the largest benefits going to lower- and middle-income households,” the report stated.

“For example, after accounting for all tax deductions and credits, filers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $40,000 to $50,000 received an average tax cut of 18.2 percent,” the Heartland Institute said.

“The IRS data further show that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act appeared to have a strong upward effect on economic mobility,” the report noted. “The number of filers with an adjusted gross income of $1 to $25,000 decreased by more than 2 million in just one year, while the number of households reporting incomes higher than $25,000 increased in every income bracket.”

The article concludes:

The Heartland Institute concluded, “The available evidence is clear: Based on tax data from 2017 and 2018, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced taxes for the vast majority of filers, led to substantial improvements in upward economic mobility, and disproportionately benefited working- and middle-class households, many of which experienced tax cuts topping 18 percent to 20 percent.”

Contrast the above with one of the provisions in The Build Back Better Bill. That bill will raise the SALT (state and local tax) deduction to $80,000. That means that you can deduct up to $80,000 in state and local taxes from your federal income tax. The tax plan instituted under President Trump limited that deduction to $10,000. Do you honestly know any middle class Americans who pay $80,000 in state and local taxes? Raising the SALT tax limit to $80,000 is indeed a tax cut for the rich.

What Should Your Priorities Be As A Parent?

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Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about a recent statement by President Biden.

The article notes:

Democrats have long wanted the government to parent or co-parent your children, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that President Joe Biden said the quiet part out loud Monday night.

The article has a screenshot of the President’s Tweet:

Nearly 2 million women in our country have been locked out of the workforce because they have to care for a child or an elderly relative at home. My Build Back Better Act will make caregiving accessible and affordable and help them get back to work.

“Locked out of the Workforce”? What? No one is locked out of the workforce.

The article reports:

But it’s untrue to claim this loss is only due to women leaving work to care for a family member. There are myriad reasons why the pandemic and government-induced shutdowns could have diminished the female workforce.

Many moved away from overpriced Democrat-run cities the last 20 months amid the constant anti-science alarmism about being near people. When one relocates, as I have six times since 2005, you often give up your job, and it obviously takes time to land a new one.

Maybe you moved to a cheaper place, and therefore don’t need a second income, especially if you sold your more expensive house. Maybe your husband now runs a small business out of the house, and so you support that business in a technically unpaid role. Biden clearly has never pondered such.

The article concludes:

Nearly one-third of mothers said in 2019 that their preference is “not working for pay at all.” As the Biden administration considers these selfless people a problem, one of their answers also is to subsidize day care centers. But most parents dislike this, with about two-thirds of parents wanting to provide their own child care — either through one parent staying home or both parents working flexible hours.

Bottom line: Joe Biden believes he is granting parents what they want by “liberating” them from child care; though in reality, they are simply giving parents what the Biden administration thinks is best.

And with a regime this indecisive and deferential, it doesn’t add up.

Don’t let the government raise your children. They won’t do a good job.

The War On Christian Day Care In The Build Back Better Bill

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On Thursday, PJ Media posted an article about some of the provisions in the Build Back Better Bill that the Biden administration is attempting to get through Congress. This bill is a combination of the ‘green new deal’,  leftover Obama administration policies that never got passed, and tax breaks for the rich. The icing on the cake is that while the bill pretty much funds anything you can think of, it prevents religious preschools and child care centers from receiving any of the handouts.

The article reports:

The New York Times is reporting that lobbyists are trying to talk Congress into stripping a provision from Build Back Better that would prevent religious preschools and child care centers from receiving their share of the gargantuan funds.

The provision at issue is a standard one in many federal laws, which would mandate that all providers comply with federal nondiscrimination statutes. Religious organizations, whose child care programs are currently exempt from some such laws, argue that it would effectively block many of their providers from participating, while civil rights advocates contend it is long past time for such institutions to comply.

Some of the faith groups are pressing lawmakers to scrap or modify the nondiscrimination language, asserting that it would essentially shut them out of the new federal program unless they made major changes to the way they operate. For instance, it could bar federal funds from going to programs that refused to hire a gay employee, gave preference to applicants of their faith or failed to renovate their facilities to accommodate disabled students.

There are provisions in this bill that blatantly go against the freedoms listed in the First Amendment. Frankly, if the bill is challenged in court, I am not sure our courts will uphold the First Amendment.

The article concludes:

The left has made the LGBTQ agenda a sacred cow, and as a result, they’ve doubled down on promoting it through culture, higher education, and K-12 schools. Now they want to use the power and purse strings of the federal government to ensure that they can push their sexual agenda to American preschoolers.

If First Amendment protected religious liberty gets in the way of that agenda, they will restrict it. This is one of many reasons why Build Back Better must be stopped.

If we don’t fight for the rights granted by Our Creator and guaranteed by our Constitution, we will lose those rights very soon.