Thread by @SeanCasten

A brief thread to try and demystify the infrastructure convo in Washington, and hopefully correct some misconceptions:

1/ First, the price is not the story. Our House rules require us to pay for any added costs, which we have done. You may object to the substance or object to the way we paid for them, but there is no basis to say "I like $3.5T better than $1.5 or $10.5" in a vacuum.

2/ Also the cost is over 10 years. $3.5T is $350B/year against a ~$5T/yr federal budget and a $20T/yr economy.

3/ So before you decide that you like or don't like the $3.5 #, you should want to know what that money pays for. A brief summary:

4/ (a) Deciding, after 30 years that Congress cannot kick the can on climate change any more. Programs to fully decarbonize our electric grid, ramp up electric vehicles, provide tax credits to clean generation and transmission and make sure those credits can be used by everyone.

4/ (b) Lowering prescription drug costs for seniors by allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceuticals (just like your private insurer and the VA already does)

5/ (c) Making the child tax credit that we passed earlier this year permanent. This is the provision that cut child poverty rates in half. We want to keep that progress.

6/ (d) Ensuring everyone has 12 weeks of family and medical leave so that you don't have to choose between paying your rent and caring for a loved one.

7/ (e) Expanding Medicare coverage to include dental and vision so that seniors don't have to skimp on critical healthcare needs

8/ (f) Lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60. (Fact: cancer diagnoses spike at 65, not because cancer rates go up but because of how many people have gaps in health coverage until they become Medicare-eligible.)

9/ That's a partial list. Now how is it paid for?

10/ (a) A big one is 4(b) above. Allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug costs lowers the cost of drugs that are purchased by the federal government for seniors. That saves a lot of patient and taxpayer money. It's a win/win.

11/ (b) Raising the top individual tax rate (only for people making > $400K) to 39.6% and raising the corporate tax rate to 26.5%. Both of these are well within levels during Clinton- and Obama-era economic booms.

12/ (c) Setting the global minimum tax rate to 15% so as to stop the process of US companies using US roads, legal systems and courts but off-shoring profits to avoid having to pay for those services on which their revenue depends.

13/ (d) Increasing funding for the IRS to ensure they have the resources to audit and collect from tax cheats. Under the current tax code this alone is costing us $1T/year. Enforce the laws we already have, dammit.

14/ (e) Sadly, it does not include provisions to eliminate existing fossil fuel subsidies. It should, but we couldn't get that through. So rest assured, fossil lobby: you still don't have to face up to the rough & tumble reality of market capitalism.

15/ Again that's a partial list, but these are the major muscle movements in the Build Back Better bill and the way they are paid for. It's good stuff! Not perfect, not complete, but transformative nonetheless.

16/ How we get this over the line depends on building a consensus among members of Congress about which of those things we choose not to invest in. I personally like all of them, but if we must compromise we will.

17/ However, every time you hear someone say that they don't like the size of the bill, you should ask them which of the benefits they would take away. Do they not take climate seriously? Do they like child poverty? Do they think medicine is already too cheap?

18/ And if they squirm out of that conversation, they are really telling you that they don't like how it's paid for. Hope this has been helpful. /fin

Postscript to fix a typo:

https://twitter.com/SeanCasten/status/1444696228613263360?s=19