Build Back Later
There’s always a risk talking about issues pending before Congress, since they change their plans on a dime, especially when it comes to passing complicated expensive bills in the dead of night while voters are sleeping.
But the word is that the so-called “Build Back Better” plan not only will not get passed before Christmas, as the Democrat leaders in the U.S. Senate wanted…but that even kicking the can down the road into early 2022 is no guarantee that an agreement will be forged.
As has been the case, it comes down the one Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. He says he’s not on board with the cost, or the game being played of expanding into a large number of programs but only funding them for a short time…meaning the real cost of the bill is triple what they say, since we all know that once a government program is put in place, it never really goes away.
Other Democrats are howling about how unfair it is that one person can hold up such a thing…but if the Democrats actually had a majority in the Senate and not simply a majority-by-tiebreaker, it wouldn’t be an issue. Similarly, had the Republicans not failed so miserably in Georgia, they’d have the majority and again…not an issue.
Realistically, why not simply wait and get feedback from constituents during the upcoming holiday break? One reason is that those in charge don’t want to know what you think…they want all their members to be inside the Washington bubble, the echo chamber, insulated from voters. Because once people actually hear what’s in the bill, they might let their senators know they’re against it, and it may be more than one Democrat who has concerns.
After all, some Democrats just defected to pass a bill eliminating the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandates on private businesses. That was a direct result of voter intervention.
Far better for them to wait and be honest about cost and implementation…as opposed to a large and expensive lump of coal in taxpayers’ stockings.
