Dems will use these tricks to make the $3.5T spending bill seem smaller

How does Congress cut a $3.5 trillion spending bill down to $1.5 trillion? By using gimmicks to hide its true cost.

They began with a reconciliation proposal that would cost nearly $5 trillion over the decade.

In order to cut the bill's "Official" cost closer to $4 trillion, the bill's authors included a December 2025 expiration of the $130 billion annual expansion of the child tax credit to $3,000 per child.

Sen. Joe Manchin has firmly said that he will not vote for President Joe Biden's infrastructure bill unless he can trim it down to $1.5M. Sen. Joe Manchin has firmly said that he will not vote for President Biden's infrastructure bill unless he can trim it down to $1.5M. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik While Jayapal asserts that Sen. Joe Manchin's limit of $1.5 trillion in new reconciliation bill benefits is "Not going to happen," she and other Democrats are discussing scaling back their proposal even further by simply stuffing the same level of annual spending into a smaller number of years.

Lawmakers fully expect to extend these policies later, ultimately raising the cost of the total reconciliation bill closer to the $3.5 trillion target.

Progressives are also discussing delaying the proposed new Medicare dental benefits until 2028, which legitimately saves money within the 10-year scoring window but also hides a larger long-term cost.

The 2017 tax cuts included expirations of some of the more popular middle-class tax cuts in order to shave the 10-year cost and also comply with the reconciliation requirement that deficits not drastically expand in future decades.
 

https://nypost.com/2021/10/04/democrats-will-resort-to-tricks-to-hide-true-cost-of-3-5t-spending-bill/amp/