For months, the White House has been promising that President Joe Biden’s massive social spending package would be fully paid for—that is, that tax
For months, the White House has been promising that President Joe Biden’s massive social spending package would be fully paid for—that is, that tax increases and other revenue-generating aspects of the “Build Back Better” plan would fully offset the nearly $1.7 trillion in proposed new spending. We now know that’s not true. Biden’s plan will add $367 billion to the budget deficit over 10 years, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Congressional Budget Office, Congress’s nonpartisan number-crunching agency. That figure comes with two big caveats. One that could increase the bill’s impact on the budget deficit, and one that could reduce it. Most importantly, the $367 billion figure could be significantly higher if not for a series of gimmicks written into the proposal intended to game the CBO’s scoring system. As Reason has previously covered, several key components of the plan are technically being implemented on a temporary basis, even though it is obvious that Congress will eventually make them permanent.
