I know this stance isn’t gonna make me a lot of friends on this site, but yeah, I am a little frustrated that we’re proposing more than twice as much additional spending on seniors as we are on R&D in a package everyone was originally told would be primarily about infrastructure.
Federal R&D spending is at historic lows while spending on seniors is at historic highs. I’d feel better if 1) R&D was better funded and/or 2) the care provisions were offset with health cost savings - we can’t keep just expanding benefits without controlling sky-high costs.
The life of a moderate is campaigning for more practical proposals than that of the ideologues, then watching your advocacy result in a final policy that is somehow even worse than if you had just let the ideologues get their way in the first place 😢
I guess now I have to point out that the reverse is also true, and if the ideologues accepted good moderate policies from the start we would be even more better off.
The main point here is that legislative sausage-making can result in the worst of both sides instead of the best.
Another way to frame this: we don't get broken proposals like today's without the left/right doing their thing too.
Like yes this phase-out is dumb but it is nowhere near as dumb as $2k/month for everyone that the far left was demanding.
This might come as a huge surprise to y'all, but I actually... really don't like this. Would create an effective marginal tax rate >50% between $75,000 and $80,000, and potentially nearing 100% (depending on how it's structured) for single parents and families with multiple kids.
If I were a worker making $80k I would be furious about this in a way I would not have been as a $100k worker under the House framework.
At this point enough is enough: we should just keep the House bill's check provision. This really dumb change makes checks more rather than less inequitable & saves hardly any money. (Lowering the phase-out start would also be fine but there's no appetite)