WH warns CBO won’t say $1.75T BBB paid for, tells Dems to ‘disregard’: report
The White House is reportedly urging House Democrats to ignore the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office if, as expected, it finds that the $1.75 trillion social spending bill will not be fully paid for.
The Biden administration “has begun bracing lawmakers for a disappointing estimate from the budget office” and encouraged them to “disregard” that assessment, the New York Times reported Monday.
House Democrats are waiting for the CBO to release its assessment, or “score,” of the spending bill — also known as the Build Back Better Act — which will determine whether money generated by increased taxes and other measures will cover the legislation’s total costs over the next 10 years.
According to the report, the White House is predicting the estimate “is likely to find that the cost of the overall package will not be fully paid for with new tax revenue over the coming decade.”
President Biden and members of his administration have long touted that the bill will cost “zero dollars,” saying increased corporate taxes, the closing of tax loopholes for wealthy Americans, and other reforms will create enough offsets.
Since last week, the CBO has released initial estimates on eight parts of the bill. So far, the agency has found that one of those eight sections — if included in the final legislation — would increase the federal budget deficit by more than $150 billion. A score on the complete legislation is expected on Friday.
According to the Times, senior administration officials are pre-emptively claiming that the CBO is “being overly conservative” in its estimates by failing to take proper account of the money that would be raised by enhanced IRS enforcement.
The Build Back Better Act has faced an uphill battle in both the House and Senate for months, and a negative report from the CBO is likely to cause more problems for the administration. Moderate Democrats in the House have been wary of committing to voting in favor of the bill before they see the score, while Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) — a crucial vote in the upper chamber — has insisted the legislation be fully paid for.
Earlier this month, Reps. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Kathleen Rice (D-NY), and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) refused to vote in favor of the bill, but did tentatively promise to back it in its current form if the score is revealed this week.
“We commit to voting for the Build Back Better Act, in its current form other than technical changes, as expeditiously as we receive fiscal information from the Congressional Budget Office – but in no event later than the week of November 15 – consistent with the topline for revenues and investments in the ‘White House Preliminary Budgetary Estimate of the Build Back Better Act’ document presented to the Democratic Caucus on November 4, 2021 by the White House,” a statement from the five moderates read on Nov. 5
On Tuesday, Schrader seemed hopeful that a vote would happen Friday, but confirmed that the bill must be paid for in order for him to support it.
“We gotta get it all, obviously,” he told reporters, referring to the CBO scoring the entire bill. “So, Friday should be good, hopefully.”
Democrats currently hold an eight-seat majority in the House, meaning they can only have three members of their caucus vote against the bill before it fails.
Many have questioned whether the Build Back Better Act will actually cost $1.75 trillion, with the US Chamber of Commerce accusing Democrats last week of using accounting “gimmicks” to hide more than $1 trillion in spending.
“We have the highest inflation in 31 years, employers are struggling to fill a record number of job openings, and the current draft of the reconciliation bill uses gimmicks to cover up well over $1 trillion in spending,” chamber executive vice president and chief policy officer Neil Bradley said in a statement.
“It would be the height of irresponsibility for Members of Congress to vote on this multi-trillion-dollar tax-and-spend bill with no clear understanding of its true cost or the real-world impact of the policies,” he added.
Last month, an analysis done by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business found that the taxes used to offset the $1.75 trillion in spending would net approximately $470 billion less than needed to cover the bill.
The White House has estimated that the new and higher levies would raise $1.995 trillion, but Wharton’s Budget Model estimated they would bring in $1.527 trillion — $468 billion below the White House figure and $223 billion short of the bill’s topline cost.
