Biden’s Build Back Better Lookin Like Casper in Crepe?

Pres Biden’s incredible shrinking if not disappearing $3.5-$5T reconciliation bill now estimated at $1.75T may yet get passed; YET it may be some time before we know exactly which big but bad progressive ideas survived to haunt us as Oct 31 Halloween approaches. As Thursday midnight passed without meeting Speaker Pelosi's latest "deadline", the Dems in Congress were still "reading" their leader's latest pleading after whittling it down thanks to a couple of progressive Senators who couldn't stomach the excess. Still, worried Bernie Sanders, "it has some [socialist] gaps."

Maybe that’s why Mr. Biden is such a “rush to gush” taxpayer money, i.e., he wants it to become law before Bernie worries more about gaps and more taxpayers see the devil in the details. Yet, the WSJ columnist Holman Jenkins wasn’t so sure any such logic has been motivating No. 46: “Among the mysteries that will have to wait for WH chief of staff Ron Klain’s memoir is what explains Mr. Biden’s deadline madness. Both the president & [Speaker] Pelosi obsessively set deadlines, which come & go, eroding their credibility. Stranger still, they often peg their political deadlines to holidays, ensuring that everyone will notice. That part is working” & explains Biden’s tanking approval ratings.

Mr. Jenkins has only so many fingers to count the Biden deadline follies. There was the July 4th deadline to have 70% of US adults vaccinated against Covid that failed; then, there was the 9/11 deadline for US troops to exit Afghanistan & when told by advisers disaster loomed he hastened it to August 31. Pelosi was the brains behind the now ancient Sept. 30 deadline for a vote on both Biden’s “infrastructure” bill & the $3.5T plus “Build Back Better” bill. Jenkins called out as examples of already doomed original BBB ideas, which Bernie calls "gaps," i.e., “free community college for all,” a mandated 4-weeks paid leave & perhaps expanding Medicare benefits as a Medicare insolvency crisis looms. Meanwhile, the WSJ editorial board panned the “negotiations” that took place within the warring Dem camp to reach Biden's $1.75T number & how one impractical tax proposal after another has been hastily if not mindlessly “floated” each time an existing impractical idea appears DOA. “There’s never been anything like this,” they wrote. “Dems are writing tax policy for a $22T economy on the fly, floating new tax increases willy-nilly, with little thought to the consequences.” Concluded Jenkins: “Build Back Better is starting to look like a condemned building, with chunks falling off almost daily.” As it should?

Davd Soul