In a belated concession to reality, President Joe Biden admitted Friday, “We’re probably not going to get $3.5 trillion this year” for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ turn-America-socialist bill, suggesting that free community college was one item that could get dropped.
Duh. That’s been obvious for a week or more; the live question is whether the White House and top Senate Dem Chuck Schumer (NY) can get Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to accept a top-line number of $2 trillion or more.
Hope they refuse: So much new spending, on top of the trillions in added outlays already out, would surpass (as a share of the economy) what America spent to win World War II. And this cash bath wouldn’t stop Hitler but further destabilize an already-shaky economy and goose already-soaring inflation.
Not that agreeing on a number seals the bill’s passage. Various Democratic factions are at odds over which parts of the wish list to keep, and some lefties still insist on keeping it all — threatening to derail the smaller bipartisan infrastructure bill if they don’t get their way.
Plus, Manchin and Sinema disagree on many issues: Just for starters, she opposes job-killing tax hikes that he’s OK with; he’s against anti-coal provisions that she favors.
It’s a bloated grab bag of lefty desires, from new Medicare benefits (when the program’s already headed for bankruptcy) to federally funded national pre-K to huge new ObamaCare subsidies to a host of green fantasies like lining the country’s entire coastline with wind farms.
Not to mention endless fine print carving out special privileges for labor unions and prioritizing subsidies on racial lines.
Those are just some of the realities Biden still ignores as he vows, “I’m going to get it done.” He also repeated his ridiculous claim that the bill’s cost is already “zero,” along with nonsense about billionaires paying less in taxes than schoolteachers.
We can’t say for sure if Biden believes his own lies or still has yet to realize that a president’s bizarre claims won’t be ignored the way people tuned out his whoppers as a US senator and veep.
Either way, his Friday concession barely touches the trouble his trademark legislation faces. Reality and Biden’s words still barely overlap.