There’s
that old saying “don’t let the perfect (Better) be the enemy of the good.” And
perhaps now is the time for the Democrats to take that admonition to heart. Manchin
has been fairly clear about his demands: Cap spending right around 1.75 trillion
dollars and make sure the programs last for the whole 10 years of the budget cycle.
So,
looking at one version of the CBO scoring and doing some back of the napkin
math—pushing everything currently in the Build Back Better bill out for the
whole 10 years would make it cost approximately 4 trillion dollars; this is 2.25 trillion
more than Manchin is willing to spend.
The
costliest item is continuing the enhanced child tax credit ($250-300 per child
per month for 35,00,000 families) and the earned income tax credit (assistance
for 17,000,000 poor people), that the current bill only funds for one additional
year. These tax credits cost 203 billion dollars for one year, but jumps to 2
trillion dollars when multiplied by 10 years. Universal pre-K for 3 and
4-year-olds, and capping childcare costs at 7% of a family’s income, was a 6-year program costing 381 billion dollars, so increasing it to a decade would
cost approximately 636 billion dollars. Similarly, the bill planned on shoring
up the ACA and Medicare for only 4 years, pumping it up to 10-year costs 420 billion.
And covering the cost of hearing aids with Medicare was planned as a 7-year
program, bumping it up to 10 pushes the cost to 51 billion dollars. Helping the
800,000 Americans who need home healthcare but can’t currently get it, tackling
climate change, and expanding the Pell grant for college students, are all unaffected
by Manchin’s constraints.
With
all that in mind, there is still room for the Democrats to do some big things
and tell the story about how they’re helping the American people. Here are a
few examples of “Build Back Good” bills that would fit Manchin’s demands:
Protecting Our
Children, Our Planet, and Our Health
This configuration just takes the four
costliest items in the Build Back Better bill, minus the tax credits that
Manchin isn’t so keen on.
$636
Billion—Universal PreK & Child Care
$570
Billion—Climate
$420
Billion—ACA & Medicare
$158
Billion—Home Health Care
Investing in our
Future
One
of Manchin’s concerns about the tax credits is that they are too universal and
should only help poor folk. So, what if number crunchers cut the eligibility for
the credits in half, so something like head of households making less than $56,250
and couples making less than $75,000 are eligible for this type of help?
This
version of the bill would focus fairly exclusively on helping younger Americans.
$1.015 Trillion—Modified Tax Credits
$636
Billion—Universal PreK & Child Care
$39.8 Billion—Expanded Pell Grants
Our Health, Our
Home
Or
finally, what if the focus is on good sustainable healthcare, climate resilience,
and plentiful affordable housing?
$420
Billion—ACA & Medicare
$158
Billion—Home Health Care
$51 Billion—Hearing Aids
$570
Billion—Climate
$148 Billion—Housing
All
this just to say, $1.75 trillion is still a lot of money, and doing one or two
big things that could help a lot of people for the next decade ought not be
seen as a consolation prize. It is worth at least imagining what is possible within the constraints of the present.
