GOP Is Lying - The BBB Bill Would NOT Raise Debt/Inflation

The Build Back Better Bill is currently stuck in the Senate. Not a single Republican is willing to support the bill -- because it helps ordinary Americans instead of corporations and the rich. And sadly, the media is treating the GOP lies about the Build Back Better Bill as though they had some substance. They don't!

Here is part of what economist Paul Krugman has to say about the BBB bashing: 

I guess reporting conventions require that journalists pretend to believe that Republicans have good-faith objections to the Biden plan — that they’re worried about deficits, or the effect on incentives, or something. But we all know that their main objection is simply the fact that it’s a Democratic initiative, which means that it must fail.

Also, it would tax the rich and help the poor.

Actually, can anyone even remember the last time leading figures in the G.O.P. seriously engaged with real policy concerns? The most recent important example I can think of is the enactment of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997. It has been bad faith ever since.

While the most important source of opposition to Build Back Better is simply the desire to see Biden fail while keeping the rich as rich as possible, there may be some sincere concern that the bill would increase budget deficits. Actually, it wouldn’t have a significant deficit impact — the Congressional Budget Office says that the spending is almost completely paid for, and attempts to claim otherwise aren’t credible. But even if the deficit did rise, why would that be such a bad thing?. . .

Again, most of the proposed spending would consist of highly productive investments.

Finally, there’s a lot of talk about how Build Back Better might worsen inflation — talk that mainly seems to involve failure to do the math, for example, by confusing decades with single years and failing to divide by gross domestic product.

It’s true that the bill’s $1.75 trillion price tag is, on the surface, a lot of money. But that’s spending over 10 years, which means that annual outlays would be far smaller than the $1.9 trillion rescue plan passed this year or, for that matter, the $768 billion annual defense bill the House passed last week.

Also, much of the spending would be paid for with new taxes. Furthermore, you should never cite a big-sounding budget number without putting it in context. Remember, the U.S. economy is enormous. The budget office estimates that in its first year Build Back Better would expand the deficit by 0.6 percent of gross domestic product, a number that would shrink over time.

I’m not aware of any economic model suggesting that spending on that scale would make much of a difference to inflation. And because much of the spending would expand the economy’s productive capacity, it would probably reduce inflation over time.

Is Build Back Better perfect? Of course not. But it’s the best legislation we’re likely to get for years to come. And claims that we should let this opportunity pass out of concern over fiscal responsibility or inflation are uninformed at best, dishonest at worst.