CBO Says Infrastructure Bill Will Add $256 Billion to Deficit Over Next Decade
“plan would directly add $256 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office found, although budget experts say that probably understates the cost of the package overall”
The infrastructure bill currently making its way through Congress is going to be more expensive than we are being told, if you can believe it.
The Congressional Budget Office has found that the bill will end up contributing $256 billion to the deficit over the course of a decade.
The Washington Post reports:
Senate infrastructure deal would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit, CBO says
The bipartisan infrastructure deal moving through the Senate would increase the federal deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper said Thursday, contradicting the claims of the plan’s authors.
The estimate could strain political support for the $1 trillion infrastructure package among some Republicans who have said they are concerned about its impact on the deficit. Some of the GOP lawmakers who helped broker the deal are expected to continue supporting the package, however, making the fate of the measure unclear. A final vote could come as early as Thursday evening.
The plan would directly add $256 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office found, although budget experts say that probably understates the cost of the package overall. That is because the plan would also approved roughly $90 billion of spending in new “contract authority” over five years, funding that would be authorized but would not be spent until appropriators decide where it goes.
CNBC has a reaction from the bill’s defenders in the Senate explaining how the bill is paid for:
Senators who crafted the plan had said it would be fully paid for through a range of sources including repurposed coronavirus relief funds, unused unemployment insurance aid and economic activity generated by the investments.
In a statement responding to the CBO estimate, lead infrastructure negotiators Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Sen. Krysten Sinema, D-Ariz., said the bill’s spending “is offset through a combination of new revenue and savings, some of which is reflected in the formal CBO score and some of which is reflected in other savings and additional revenue identified in estimates, as CBO is limited in what it can include in its formal score.” They said they would work to get the bill passed by Congress and signed into law.
The Senate was considering amendments to the bill Thursday, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., aims to pass it before early next week. The release of the CBO report was one of the key steps remaining before the Senate votes on the proposal.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been pushing harder than anyone to get this bill passed. Last week, he said that without the Democrats’ massive spending, the ‘climate crisis’ will be worse than COVID. Watch:
Missed this wild line from Schumer earlier:
"COVID was horrible. But if we do nothing on climate, starting within a few short years from now, each year will be worse than COVID."
COVID killed 4 million people, including more than 600K Americans. https://t.co/rsRvQ7a87C pic.twitter.com/UfkELmphZu
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) July 28, 2021
That might be why this tidbit about studying a ‘fee per-mile driven’ policy is tucked away in the ‘infrastructure’ bill.
Buried in the 2700 page infrastructure bill: pic.twitter.com/9IOPlXRQ1k
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) August 4, 2021
I’m amazed that this bill has any Republican support, but at this point maybe I shouldn’t be.
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Comments
I didn’t know the CBO was still a thing. Have they ever been right once?
No. Which is exactly why they’re staffed with incompetent but connected Democrats.
The CBO, and our entire government, is filled with political cronies, because they pay absolutely no penalty for making catastrophically bad predictions and decisions.
The mileage tax is just an intermediate step to make driving cost prohibitive. Their end goal is to get us out of our cars altogether and keep us corraled in “smart cities.”
Ditto with the self-driving car nonsense…slightly different means, but rest assured it’s the same end goal.
Why do you think Pedo Pervert Joe is pushing to have half of all new cars be zero emissions by 2030? All part of their sick end game. Agenda 2030: you will own nothing, and you WILL be happy.
The pedophile may want that. But, do you think the car companies are going to build a ton of EV’s nobody wants and pass on sales of conventional vehicles? Maybe the first year, but 20% of Californians who bought EV’s say they plan to replace them with internal combustion vehicles because charging is such a pain and takes so much time. They can make all of the crappy EV’s they want, but they can’t make me buy one. I will never buy a vehicle that’s inferior, even brand new, to what I already own that can be refueled in less than 5 minutes.
I agree with EV vs conventional cars, but if internal combustion engines get squashed by government diktat (cf the incandescent light bulb) , you won’t have any choice.
Eventually they will ban EVs as well because they’re polluting the environment just as much (if not more so) as regular cars. Then they’ll have to where they want you… in your little rented rabbit hutch in their smart cities where you’ll be under constant surveillance, renting everything but owning nothing, and you’ll be happy, dammit.
Save us from principled Republicans.
Is every Republican in the Northwest a Romney clone? Seriously. The Republicans are leading the effort to sell this pile of crap to the voters.
In the end, they will agree to a $5.5 trillion bill loaded with China gifts and Marxist programs whose funding will be appropriated plus this bill which purports to have what the GOP wants but whose funding will be re=directed to more China gifts and Marxist programs. That’s the was the kabuki system works.
And if the CBO says it, you KNOW that it’s at least 3-4 times as much.
The CBO is usually wrong by at least a factor of 3……. so we are talking clost to one trillion more in government waste and corruption that taxpayers and their descendants have to fund. Urge your Congress critter to just say no to this crap.
I’m amazed that this bill has any Republican support, but at this point maybe I shouldn’t be.
The Franz von Papen want to turn Reaching Across The Aisle into an Olympic sport. If they did, this is one time I would applaud anyone who took a knee….
They’d be smart to stay hands-off and force the communists to force it through without them.
Unfortunately we don’t call it the “Stupid Party” for no reason at all.
‘The bipartisan bill costs $1.2 billion’…..however it will authorize but not appropriate an additional $450 million. Nice.
Maybe it would be a good idea to table this and go to August recess. Read, examine and study the legislation and get constituent input in town halls at home. Then come back and debate the merits.
Not that the Senate will do that but they have the option. Choices have consequences. Choose wisely.
Remember, this is the warmup to what Schumer, Pelosi, and others really want: To pass the $3.5 trillion tax, spend, and enact policies like DACA reconciliation bill that Schumer has said will come immediately after this bill and wants the Senate to finish before they go on recess. The Senate was scheduled to start at the end of this week, so if he keeps to that schedule the Senate is already going to lose part or all of the first full week of recess.
The House will come back from its recess to take up both bills and whatever the Senate passes will be what they will attempt to pass.
Well, so much for “fully funded”. Just another communist lie.
Um, yeah, like who believed that crap anyway? They are going to charge us per mile driven, and they are gong to hit us with a zillion other taxes and restrictions.
Look, they want us to be cave people. No air conditioning, no cars, no home ownership, just a bunch of naked peasants scraping for berries and feeling happy to do that since white people totally suck and deserve to suffer for the suffering of . . . blah blah.
If we don’t get this in hand, we are heading to the new dark ages. Remember how everyone was like, gee, how did we get from the philosophical greatness of Ancient Greece, the art, the engineering, the wonders . . .to the Middle Ages when flea-ridden rubes, illiterate and downtrodden, were mere slaves to the powers that be. How does that happen? The totalitarians take over, they dumb it all down (honestly, I taught writing and literature at the college level for 20 years, and I quit when it became clear to me that I was not supposed to teach either writing or lit).
We end up with the dumbest people the earth has ever seen, and we decide that air conditioning is bad and must be abolished, that eating meat is bad and must be abolished, that all norms of language, society, and culture are bad and must be abolished.
Hello the new dark ages, where history is extinguished, where truth is wronghink and lies are felt to be true. God help us all.
For those that have the aptitude of foresight, it is abundantly clear that we are headed into the seventh level of Dante’s Inferno. Politicians know what’s coming and think they can remain in the ruling class, thus free from worry about the future. The Dark Ages has been on my mind ever since Pedo Joe slithered into the Oval Office. Voting rights were all we had left of ~The Balance of Power~ until evil forces massively cheated their way into total power.
If everyone could see what is in store for us and our children, we would march en masse to Washington by the 80+ millions and deliver the changes that none of us can live without.
“It couldn’t happen here!”
That’s the problem. It can happen anywhere and it IS happening here. They have successfully politicized EVERYTHING to the point that families can’t have a conversation about politics because politics is the new religion. There is only one “correct” side to be on.
I have found it impossible to successfully navigate the daily mine field where there are so many “trigger” words that just about anything I say to certain people will get them spewing hate. And I never know what word will do it until it happens. I never would have believed that so many people I had known to be very nice and sensible could turn into Dr. Jekkyl and Mr. Hyde.
Life has become so creepy that I am seriously looking to relocate not on the basis of the politics of where I would be going to but how I could survive without having to deal with it. I am looking to escape. People can’t even do something as simple as NOT WEARING A MASK! Will we ever hit the streets by the droves for anything? What a brave people we are. America’s worst generation.
The CBO is knowingly lying. There are costs other than direct expenditures, in this case inflation or, God help us all, hyperinflation.
It is doubtful that they would be correct even without inflationary pressure. The outgo always seems to exceed the “budget” and income never appears as the politicians (particularly the Socialist/Communists with their new taxes) pretend they have instituted.
Well I’m not sure that’s actually the case. Firstly understanding and predicting inflation is pretty hard especially when trying to separate the effect of Covid out. That makes long term predictions difficult. In fact it’s difficult to say there is inflation given the price rises are for specific products and not across the board. So talk of hyper inflation is nonsense at this stage
Yeah, this will cost a whole crap ton more. Our debt is starting to begin a hyperbolic trend.