We Need to Pass It to Find Out What’s in It

‘E very element of my economic plan is overwhelmingly popular,” explained President Joe Biden. “But the problem is, with everything happening, not everybody knows what’s in that plan.”

If every element of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill were overwhelmingly popular, then Democrats would be spending time talking about every element in the plan. They’re not. Why?

Instead, Democratic leaders have spent the last ten days telling themselves and the public that the plan costs zero dollars. That’s not what you do when you are confident that the things you are about to purchase are overwhelmingly popular. In this they compare unfavorably to the gutless husbands who try to explain that their luxury-watch and sports-car purchases are about resale value and constitute an investment. Telling us that the Build Back Better plan costs zero dollars is basically begging people to consider it too unimportant to look into it.

It is the strangest thing. This bill was billed as the legislation that would make Joe Biden the most consequential Democratic president since FDR.

Democrats vowed to “save democracy” from the evils of Trump and the Republicans. And yet, there’s been no real debate over the purposes of this bill, except over the price tag. And that’s being done behind closed doors with Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who occasionally smirk or growl at reporters in the seconds before the elevator door closes on them.

In that absence, people are filling in their own theories. Conservative columnist David Brooks thinks that we need to spend $4 trillion to establish that American people who aren’t enrolling their children in endless test prep and humanitarian resume-padding are respected by their betters. It will “ease the indignity” of raising your kids in poverty. He thinks it says to struggling workers: “I see you. Your work has dignity. You are paving your way. You are at the center of our national vision.”

I’m not as sure. Given the way Democratic amendments keep making programs meant to ease the indignity of poverty available to couples earning $400,000 in reported income — often tilting it so that affluent suburbanites extract the most benefit, and then trying to sneak in a reinstatement of the SALT deductions — it looks more like a form of crass patronage for blue-state suburbanites who are buying lots of test prep and humanitarian resume-padding for their future professional middle-class children.

On the left, the argument for going big revolves around climate change. For several decades the environmental movement has preached an undisguised politics of austerity: Get ready to use less energy, drive slower cars shorter distances, do less flying, pay more for everything including heating your home, and maybe you should stop having children, too. We’re going to shrink human life to make it sustainable. Also, if you’re one of the many men who do work that is involved in non-green energy extraction, prepare to lose your job forever.

But a few years ago, the idea of a Green New Deal came along. In the first draft it included promises of economic security, even for those “unwilling to work.” The idea was that you had to guarantee everyone a job and a higher quality of life and end social injustice — and that by doing so, you could then create buy-in for a decarbonization of human civilization.

The reconciliation bill is a kind of mutant child of the Green New Deal, which is why progressives are yoking their climate anxiety to it. We have to spend trillions of dollars because, somehow, spending it on day care helps us to do what Obama promised but failed to do — turn back the rising tides.

Another reason it can’t be talked about is that nobody knows precisely what will get the chop as the House and Senate do their final wrangling. But we have come to a pretty sad end when Democrats are promising that the most popular bill imaginable is about to pass, that it’s going to be as historic as the New Deal, and possibly save the world — but no we can’t debate it, and yes, we’re too ashamed to talk about the price.