Congressional Budget Office Says I.R.S. Proposal Will ‘Yield Far Less’ Than White House Stated

In an in-depth analysis, The New York Times writes that President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi have misled us with persistent accusations that the ‘Build Back Better’ bill “costs nothing.”

The Times reports on just how wrong Pelosi and Biden have been:

The director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Monday that the I.R.S. proposal would yield far less than what the White House was counting on to help pay for its bill — about $120 billion over a decade versus the $400 billion that the administration is counting on.

A formal tally is expected to be released on Friday, but the projection by Phillip Swagel, who heads the budget office, could pose another setback for Mr. Biden’s domestic policy legislation, which is already facing steep hurdles in the House and Senate.

The White House has begun bracing lawmakers for a disappointing estimate from the budget office, which is likely to find that the cost of the overall package will not be fully paid for with new tax revenue over the coming decade. Senior administration officials are urging lawmakers to disregard the budget office assessment, saying it is being overly conservative in its calculations, failing to properly credit the return on investment of additional I.R.S. resources and overlooking the deterrent effects that a more aggressive tax collection agency would have on tax cheats.

National Review writes pointedly, “they lied to you.” They lied to you, the American people, “because they believe that you don’t want to think too hard about all of those numbers, that you just want to get more free stuff from the government, and that you’ll believe somebody else will pay for it.”

“They lied to you because they think you believe that the government can borrow as much as it wants, for as long as it wants, without consequence. They think you won’t notice or care that the U.S. government spent $562,388,232,682.17 — that’s more than $562 billion dollars — on interest payments for the debt in fiscal year 2021” adds National Review.