Will the upcoming passing of the reconciliation bill whittled from $3.5T to maybe half of that prove the "Sweet Meteor of Political Death" for Joe Biden? Unlikely.
Notwithstanding the jig of pleasure being performed by Larry Kudlow, who wrote in The New York Sun, "Liberal Press Starts Jabber Walking as Biden Tax, Spending Plan Begins To Collapse":
"Let’s begin at the beginning. Save America. Kill the bill. It seemed quixotic a few months ago when I began this mantra. Well, events are moving at the speed of light. Headlines Thursday were breathtaking. I think there is now a high and rising probability that the bill — in all of its fading majesty — will be killed."
It grieves me to suggest that Larry won’t deserve credit for saving America with his magic mantra.
Still, in the words of our mutual idol Ronald Reagan, "Facts are stubborn things."
Writing at Newsmax last April I noted that Biden was shrewdly pandering to his left wing to mitigate a catastrophic internecine party battle, relying on the sensible Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., to modulate the worst of the excesses.
Que será será!
At the last minute the leaders of the Democrats' militant left faction will reluctantly agree to take a smaller, yet substantial, pink pork-barrel bill.
The slimmed down bill likely will carry a modest Medicare expansion, a month of family leave, a subsidy for pre-K, child tax credits, a sprinkling of renewable energy pork, and symbolic pinches of this — and dashes of that.
All will be mostly "paid for" with accounting gimmicks and borrowing rather than whopping tax rate hikes on billionaires and corporations … or carbon. America somehow will survive.
Then Biden, Manchin, Sinema, Sanders, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and their ilk, will share a big "Teletubbies" hug, sing two verses of "Kumbaya" — while declaring victory.
And they will have cause. To paraphrase something the late Sen. Everett Dirksen maybe never said "A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money."
No, I don't share Larry Kudlow’s "kill the bill" optimism, as Larry is a romantic.
I’m realpolitik. The Democratic Party is noticing Biden’s poll implosion.
"Killing (either) bill" could turn Biden into a lame duck costing Democrats (already filled with dread) even more seats in 2022.
So, they will flinch. Then proclaim victory.
Accepting less is pure Alinsky, who wrote, in "Rules for Radicals," "If you start with nothing, demand 100 per cent, then compromise for 30 per cent, you're 30 per cent ahead."
Don’t be surprised when the progressives start crowing about pocketing their winnings.
Of course, even a $1.6 trillion reconciliation would be mostly smoke and mirrors.
Spread out over 10 years it’s a lot less than it sounds: $160 billion per year on top of discretionary federal spending of $1.6 trillion per year [2021, per CBO (the Congressional Budget Office)] would be a 10% increase, and one politically unlikely to continue for the projected ten years.
Biden gets pilloried by the pachyderms for fomenting a Neo-Bolshevik Revolution.
Sorry, but a 10% increase in discretionary spending, though regrettable, doth not make Joe Biden the second coming of Lenin.
Meanwhile, Biden gets pilloried by the left for not fomenting a Neo-Bolshevik Revolution.
The New York Times’s Michael Shearer proclaims that Biden the Dealmaker Finds that Compromise Can Have Consequences:
"By spending the last several months pushing for an even larger and more ambitious agenda, knowing that he would most likely have to pare it back, Mr. Biden has let down some supporters who believed he could deliver on his soaring rhetoric about the need for better higher education, expanded Medicare services and bold advances in the fight against climate change."
Sorry, but disappointing unrealistic expectations by your enthusiasts just isn’t politically suicidal.
The Hill’s donks are already scheduled for a drubbing in 2022 because it’s in the nature of our political cycle for the incumbent president’s party to get shellacked — on the Hill.
Also, the Democrats have moved too far left for the electorate’s taste. The sweet meteor will not be insufficient profligacy to excite their lunatic fringe into turning out to vote.
There is, as usual in the capital, less here than meets the eye. The fate of the republic (from the viewpoint of the right) and all that is good and holy (from the viewpoint of the left) do not hang in the balance.
Soon, a compromise will be unveiled.
Cue some weeping and gnashing of teeth by both sides’ zealots.
Then the "Establishment Media Tabernacle Choir" shall raise its voice in hymns of praise to Joe Biden's political wisdom, drowning out the sounds of weeping and gnashing, while Washington goes back to doing what it does best: spending as much of our money as it can get its hands on.
And they all, Democrats and Republicans, lived happily ever after. At our expense.
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $88T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.