Biden's Build Back Better Act Will Likely Cost Twice as Much as the CBO Projects. Here's Why.

President Joe Biden's Build Back Better Act is likely to end up costing taxpayers about double what the official price tag suggests, and much of that hidden cost will end up being added to the national debt.

Both rely on a key assumption that did not figure into the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the bill: that the Build Back Better plan's various policies will be in place for at least the next 10 years.

"The Build Back Better Act relies on a number of arbitrary sunsets and expirations to lower the official cost of the bill," explains the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit that advocates for balanced budgets.

The group's newly updated analysis of the Build Back Better plan finds that the package will cost an estimated $4.8 trillion over 10 years if all provisions are made permanent-double the price tag applied by the CBO last month.

With all those gimmicks in place, the CBO assessment of the bill projects that it will cost about $1.8 trillion and add about $367 billion to the deficit over the next decade.

If all the Build Back Better plan's proposals were made permanent the final price tag would be $4.8 trillion, and the bill would add about $2.8 trillion to the deficit, according to the CRFB. "To be sure, lawmakers may choose not to extend some or all of these provisions," the CRFB analysis states.

In short, by hiding the true cost of the Build Back Better plan's provisions over the long term, Congress is also able to hide the long-term economic impact of hiking government spending by trillions of dollars.
 

https://reason.com/2021/12/01/bidens-build-back-better-act-will-likely-cost-twice-as-much-as-the-cbo-projects-heres-why/