The BIF, Build Back Better, Continuing Resolution and Debt Ceiling omnibus

Holy shit. This could be a hell of a crazy week.



Build Back Better (the $3.5T version) would be the biggest investment in the American People since the Great Society.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF) is $1T.

Which will be on top of the $1.9T stimulus bill passed this spring.

And the Industry Modernization whatever that passed last summer (which no one talked about or seems to even remember) which was $200B of additional spending invested in R&D, modernizing our manufacturing and making our supply chains more resilient.

Add those all together and you are starting to get some real spending* going on.

IF the Dems can pull it off.

We’ll see.



*For comparison the actual Federal spending portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Obama stimulus) was ~$270B (in 2014 dollars, so higher but I’m too lazy to do the math). The majority was tax cuts and transfers to state and local governments to keep them afloat.

Isn't Manchin acting the cunt and stopping this stuff from passing?

Small portion of the 3.25T to silence him.

Hopefully he will do what he did with the stimulus and talk about price, looking at the details and make sure blah blah blah, ask for some creative accounting, a limit here or there and then go claim that he ‘saved’ $200 BILLION DOLLARS!!1!

To me the biggest dangers right now are Sinema and some House moderates. Big Pharma has gotten to them about allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Which is a hell of a hill to try and make a stand on as something like 70% OF REPUBLICANS think it is crazy that the government isn’t allowed to negotiate prices. I don’t think there is any other provision that polls as high.


[edit]Oops. I was wrong. Close enough.

Nancy Pelosi's father was the mayor of Baltimore. When she was growing up, her mother didn't have a paying job, but she basically worked full time solving problems for people. Every time she helped someone, their name went in a card file. Over the years, the card file grew and grew, and when a new person came into her living room needing help, she would reach into that card file and find somebody she had helped out years ago and who was now successful, and she'd ask them to pay it forward. Growing up with her mother, Nancy Pelosi learned how to develop an encyclopedic knowledge of what people want and need. That's probably what made her such an effective legislative operator that one Democratic strategist called her "Lyndon Johnson in a skirt."

Maybe this will be the thing that is too much for her, but in general, if you bet against Nancy Pelosi, you're probably gonna lose.

And anyway, who cares about that enormous mountain of debt left behind? Some schmuck in the future has to pay for that.

Some vague, bumper-stickery rhetoric about military spending and Elon Musk in 3....2....

No they don't.

Does that mean you don't think the investment in industry and infrastructure will work?

Because if it does, if basically pays for itself.

Lanzman only supports constitutionality mandated expenses that create crippling generational debt, like his own salary and pension.

We are the leading reserve currency and the rest of the world likes to buy our debt. We have a AAA rating. That could be in jeopardy if one of the leading political parties were to hijack our economy. Now cue bothsiderism in 3..2..1..

Including your own central bank, who owns most of it and who can (and does) continue rolling it over indefinitely.

No, no ... you see, government budgets and household budgets are Exactly Alike.

Right. And sovereign debt has no impact on national finances.

You're so cute when you're stupid.

Oh look, it's the guy from everyone's Econ 101 class who never stops raising his fucking hand.

An entirely different claim. Your original one was completely false, and it's one you're corrected on every time this topic comes up.

Right now USD$1 gets you AUD$1.37, CAD$1.26, or GBP£0.73.

Just while we're sharing things that don't seem to be connected in any real way to the conversation that's happening.

So it’s better to do nothing and let your country become more outdated and uncompetitive?

I mean infrastructure, supply chains and manufacturing are what tax dollars should go towards, that’s excellent representation

What else do you suggest?

Oh, it just magically vanishes? Doesn’t become a huge annual line item in the budget, servicing that debt? Doesn’t act as a drag on other economic activity?
Until the Other Side is the majority, of course, then the debt suddenly becomes a hugely important issue.

Infrastructure yes. Manufacturing no. That’s the market's job. Supply chain is half infrastructure and half market. The assumption being made is that government dumping massive money into the economy will grow it. It can just as easily cause runaway inflation. But the real root of the problem is the fixation on short term profit. That’s what restrains companies from reinvesting in themselves when they should, they’re too busy answering the shareholder demand for quick returns as opposed to long term security.

It doesn't vanish, but since it can be rolled over, it being in the budget makes no difference in itself. If there are harmful effects of that, it's up to you to demonstrate that rather than spouting nonsense.

Do you not understand that the debt must be serviced? And money spent on that is money not available for other needs (like, say, infrastructure projects) and comes from tax revenues like everything else? The US gets away with the financial shenanigans we do largely because the dollar is the world's reserve currency. Should that change - and China, for example, would love to change that - the US suddenly becomes Greece. You can't run deficits and build up debt forever with no consequences. Sooner or later the other players in the game start to look at you funny and the good times dry up.
And that's not even taking in to account the "soft power" consequences, like when the Leader of the Free World tells Carjackistan that they need to tighten up their finances if they want to play in the global marketplace, and Carjackistan looks at how the Leader of the Free World is doing their own finances and gets doubtful.

So two points:
1) This won’t all be debt financed. $2T will come from getting rid of the Trump Billionaire Tax Giveaway.

2) Right now people are literally paying the US to hold on to their money (interest on T-Bills is less than inflation). Now is the time to invest in the American people and economy.

This post is utter gibberish from start to finish.

1. Money that the US spends does not come from taxes. As just about everyone is blue in the face with telling you now, the US is not a household with a bank account that can run empty. The US controls its own currency. It can and does - as can every other country that controls it's own currency - meet expenditures independently of whether the money has first been collected in taxation. That taxes are collected at all is entirely optional.

2. The US cannot and will not "become Greece" unless it joins a currency issued by a third-party which it cannot control, as Greece did. Greece was unable to roll over its debt. That literally cannot happen to you unless it's because of a self-imposed debt ceiling.

3. What the fuck does "the other players in the game start to look at you funny" mean? Tell us why they'd do that, and what financial mechanism thereby causes the good time to "dry up". Other countries that would like to replace the dollar with their own currency are going to try that anyway. But they can't because they don't have the power to do it. They aren't witholding that power to employ based on some arbitrary moralistic judgement about whether the US has "too much debt".

4. Yes, the US gets away with stuff because it owns the worlds reserve currency - but you have provided no evidence as to why running a deficit is likely to erode that position. In fact, trying to run a surplus would be more damaging, as it would undermine the secondary market in US debt - this actually happened in the Clinton era the last time the books were balanced.

5. There may be consequences of too much debt or any of these things - but they are not the ones that you claim. In particular, one might argue that inflation will eventually increase as the money supply does - but it hasn't happened yet - and supply can be tightened if it does.

6. Carjackistan do not control their own currency. They can become like Greece.

Good lord. You really don't understand how this works. Okay, I'm done.

And the thread will be better for it. You’re obviously out of your depth Donny.

I remember going to Sydney 10 years ago when the US and AUS dollar were damn near 1:1 in value. Even the New Yorkers were stunned at how expensive Sydney was.

Great quality of life, but holy balls.

I think you messed up the quote tags, I'm pretty sure this is what @Ancalagon and @RickDeckard just told you.

Around that time the exchange rate got to AUD$1 buying USD$1.10. A lot of Australians went on holidays to the US purely because everything was so cheap for a while.

It's better for export industries now the exchange rate is back to more historical norms, but I do miss those super cheat imports!