Biden: ‘We’re Not Going to Get $3.5 Trillion’

By Yuval Rosenberg

President Biden on Friday pitched the
importance of his economic agenda, arguing that the two
bills he’s trying to get passed "are literally about
competitiveness versus complacency, about opportunity versus decay,
and about leading the world or continuing to let the world move by
us." At the same time, he conceded he and Democratic
leaders won’t get everything they want.

Here’s what you need to know.

Biden: ‘We’re Not Going to Get $3.5
Trillion’

President Joe Biden acknowledged Friday that the new spending
proposed in his economic plan will have to shrink below the $3.5
trillion level set by Democratic leaders and sought by progressives
in his party. He insisted, though, that both that Build Back Better
plan and a bipartisan infrastructure bill will get enacted, even as
intraparty disputes continue to cloud their path forward.

"I’ll be honest with you, we’re probably not going to get $3.5
trillion this year," Biden said at an event at a Connecticut
childcare center to promote the legislation. "We’re going to get
something less than that. But I’m going to negotiate. I’m going to
get it done with the grace of god and the good will of neighbors
and the creek not rising, as my grandpop would say."

Biden later added that he’s convinced Democrats will get the
bills done: "We’re not going to get $3.5 trillion. We’ll get less
than that. But we’re going to get it and we’re going to come back
and get the rest."

Sinemanchin still holding out: Biden’s professed optimism
belies the struggles he and his party have faced in coming together
on both the total spending in the economic plan and the specifics
included in it. CNN’s Manu Raju
reported Friday morning that both Sens. Joe
Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) "made clear to their
colleagues this week that a deal on the party's sweeping economic
package is far from secured."

Sinema reportedly told lawmakers that she felt House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi’s decision a couple of weeks ago to delay a promised
vote on the bipartisan infrastructure package — legislation that
Sinema played a key role in negotiating — represented a "breach in
trust." House progressives threatened to withhold their support for
that bill before the broader social welfare and climate package had
been settled. Sinema reportedly also indicated to lawmakers that
she preferred that the House pass the infrastructure bill before
she backs a broader economic package.

Raju adds that, on a call with fellow Democrats, neither Sinema
nor Manchin endorsed the smaller spending range of $1.9 trillion to
$2.2 trillion that Biden has proposed — a range the progressives
insist is too small.

Both Sinema and Manchin also
object to specific elements of the Build Back
Better package and are reportedly urging that some provisions be
dropped to narrow the overall scope of the plan.

"In particular," Raju reports, "Manchin raised concerns over the
proposed expansion of Medicare to include dental, vision and
hearing coverage -- something that Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont
independent, has contended is a red line for him and other
progressives." Progressives are pushing to keep a broader array of
programs in the legislation while reducing costs by limiting the
duration of some parts of the plan. That approach carries the risk
that some programs
don’t get renewed — and it rankles fiscal conservatives
who worry that Democrats won’t cover the true costs of their
long-term agenda.

Biden hints at one possible cut: Reports this week
indicate that Democrats are debating a
variety of
potential cuts as they look to scale back the
overall spending in their plan. In his speech Friday, Biden hinted
at one provision that could be on the chopping block, saying that
he didn’t know if he could push through his proposal to spend $109
billion over 10 years to provide two free years of community
college.

The bottom line: White House Press
Secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday told
the hosts of Pod Save America that time is running short and the
negotiations can’t drag on forever. "We're just in kind of the
messy, messy phase," she said, where the parties involved are
shaking their "arguing for what they think is most important."
Those arguments don’t appear to be yielding much progress, though —
at least not publicly. "[A]fter several one-on-one meetings between
the president, Manchin and Sinema, Democrats don’t seem any closer
to agreeing on a framework than a month ago," The Hill’s Alexander
Bolton
writes. "This is fueling frustration among
senators who see this Congress as a once-in-a-generation
opportunity to pass bold reforms as the House and possibly the
Senate are in danger of flipping to Republicans in the 2022 midterm
election."

Strong Support for Taxing the Rich to Pay for
Biden Agenda: Poll

Lawmakers are still wrangling over the size, scope and content
of President Biden’s social and economic agenda, but according to
new poll data, the majority of Americans already agree on how to
pay for it: by taxing the rich.

In a poll of 1,226 likely voters conducted last week by
Vox and Data for Progress, more than 70% of
respondents expressed support for taxing high-income households to
help pay for Democrats’ plan to spend as much as $3.5 trillion on a
variety of social programs. Seventy-two percent "strongly" or
"somewhat" backed the idea of increasing capital gains on wealthy
households, while 71% supported higher income taxes on the top 2%
and limiting deductions for business owners.

A majority also expressed support for increasing funding for the
IRS to ensure that businesses and the wealthy pay the taxes they
owe, and for raising the corporate tax rate.

Less certainty on specific proposals: While 63% of
respondents said they strongly or somewhat support Biden’s Build
Back proposal – which the poll described as a "$3.5 trillion
proposal that would expand Medicare bene􀁂ts to include vision,
hearing, and dental care, make long-term care for seniors and
people with disabilities, healthcare, and child care more
affordable, extend tax cuts for families with children, and create
clean energy jobs" – there was less agreement on what the most
important elements of the plan are.

The single provision that received the most support is raising
taxes, which 13% of respondents chose as their top priority. Twelve
percent chose expanding Medicare as their top priority, while
another 12% said funding long-term care for older adults and people
with disabilities was most important.

Other elements that some Democratic lawmakers say are crucial,
such as funding for child care, universal pre-K and free community
college, received less support, with less than 5% of respondents
saying they were a top priority.

Sanders blames the press: Although polls show that a
majority of Americans generally support the Biden agenda, they also
show that the public doesn’t know much about the details of the
plan. This will only make Democrats’ job that much harder as they
try to determine which provisions to cut and which to leave in as
they work to trim the size of the overall plan.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Friday issued a statement accusing
the media of failing to explain the Biden plan to the public,
echoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who leveled a similar charge
earlier this week.

"Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for the $3.5
trillion Build Back Better," Sanders said. "And the polling numbers
go astronomically high when people understand that this $3.5
trillion bill will be paid for by demanding that the wealthy and
large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes."

But "the mainstream media has done an exceptionally poor job in
covering what actually is in the legislation," Sanders charged.
"There have been endless stories about the politics of passing
Build Back Better, the role of the president, the conflicts in the
House and the Senate, the opposition of two senators, the size of
the bill, etc. – but very limited coverage as to what the
provisions of the bill are and the crises for working people that
they address."

Saying the Biden plan is "one of the most consequential pieces
of legislation for working people in the modern history of our
country," Sanders called on the press to do a better job explaining
it. "The American people have a right to know what's in it," he
said. "My hope is that mainstream media will fulfill their
responsibilities and make that happen."

But, but, but: Sanders’ critique undoubtedly
has some truth to it in that the media has extensively covered
Democrats’ intraparty disputes and the politics surrounding the two
major pieces of legislation. But those disputes have also created
massive uncertainty about what exactly the Build Back Better plan
will and won’t include.

Covid Shaves Years Off Life Expectancy in
Hardest-Hit States: Study

Covid-19 reduced life expectancy in the U.S. by a year and a
half in 2020, according to data from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention released last summer. Now, a researcher at
the University of California at Los Angeles has determined that in
some states, the loss has been even more severe.

In an analysis published in the BMJ Open journal,
UCLA sociologist Patrick Heuveline found that in the past year,
Covid has reduced life expectancy by more than two years in 16
states, with the worst results concentrated in the South and
Southwest. (See the map from
Bloomberg incorporating the study’s results
below.)

Texas, for example, saw its life expectancy at birth drop by 2.6
years, to 76.4. Arizona also saw a 2.6-year reduction, to 77.2,
while South Dakota saw a reduction of 2.5 years, to 76.8.

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