Billy Long: Build billionaires back better

(From Seventh District Congressman Billy Long)

A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money. 

Ever since President Biden came into office, he’s proposed more and more spending including trillions on his latest fiasco 'Build Back Better' but claims that the true cost will be zero. 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently put that myth to rest once and for all. For years Democrats have considered the CBO's score on bills the gold standard, but now not so much. The CBO's analysis says this Trojan Horse of a spending plan would balloon the deficit to unfathomable levels.

 

The CBO score showed that no matter how much The Biden/Harris White House wants you to believe this is a zero sum game, the true cost of this scheme is not even close to the $1.75 trillion that they are floating. 

To reach that fictitious number, they have successfully performed a sleight of hand that would have made Houdini proud. If passed, this bill would create socialist programs that the Democrats designed specifically to end in a year so, in order to camouflage the true cost. 

To quote Milton Friedman "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." In reality the American people would be on the hook to pay for them forever, which is exactly what the Democrats want. 

They used these legislative shenanigans mostly to try and lure Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) into supporting this boondoggle. These two Senators are standing in the gap against the high cost of the bill, so their leadership designed programs within to sunset certain provisions, with a plan to renew the programs at a later date. 

When the CBO factored in this creative accounting, the true cost of the bill came out to a whopping $5 trillion over 10 years, while adding $3 trillion to the national debt. I guess when they said it would cost nothing they figure $5 trillion is a rounding error in today's Washington. To put this cost in perspective, in 2019, the entire federal budget was $4.4 trillion.

It’s not just the topline cost of the bill that is concerning, it’s the actual impact of it. They call this bill Build Back Better, but it should be called Build Billionaires Back Better because that’s exactly what it would do. 

One of the most glaring ways it benefits millionaires and billionaires is by repealing the cap on state and local taxes (SALT). President Trump’s tax cuts created a cap on the SALT deduction, meaning that the richest people in the highest taxed states couldn’t deduct their full state and local taxes from their federal taxes. 

This policy makes sense, because SALT is used by the wealthy in New York, New Jersey and California to skirt their federal tax liabilities. 

Despite what the Democrats say, removing this cap would not benefit the middle class. The cap is currently set at $10,000 and raising it would give on average $25,900 back to the wealthy while giving only $20, or four Big Macs to middle class families. 

On top of raising that cap, Democrats are also including new tax breaks, such as the electric vehicle deduction. This allows a family making up to $500,000 a year to deduct up to $12,500 if they purchase an electric vehicle. This would largely benefit the wealthy, because the average American cannot afford a Tesla, so they wouldn’t receive that tax break.

Since President Biden came into office, inflation has skyrocketed, the Southern Border is an oxymoron since it is no longer a border, our foreign policy failures have been intolerable and defunding the police has led to a whole new enterprise known as 'Smash 'N Grab, Inc.' 

Instead of finding ways to fix these important problems the Democrats have spent all of their time finding new ways to mislead the American public and spend your tax dollars to increase the size of government and its corresponding debt. It’s pretty clear looking at the CBO score that this strategy will have dire consequences for our economy. 

On a recent trip to Table Rock Lake, I had a 5lbs. Largemouth Bass jump clear out of the water, but shortly thereafter it broke my line and got away. I can relate to Joe Biden's frustration having had a $5 trillion bill so close, only to break off and swim away. Thankfully it looks like Senator Manchin didn't take the bait.