We'll get to the fresh, bruising polling data in a moment, but let's start with another blow to the Biden agenda. We already knew that the Democrats' massive tax-and-spend binge would cost far more than the insulting "zero dollars" White House talking point. The real cost is in the trillions, and the only way they can claim relatively small additions to deficits is by employing obvious budget gimmicks. Despite this gaming of the "score" from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the official analysis still produced projections of hundreds of billions in new deficit spending. The House-passed bill also raises taxes on millions of middle class families while furnishing a massive tax break to rich people in blue states (including an estimated two-thirds of millionaires). It would also blow up America's child care economy, with millions of non-subsidized, government-selected 'losers' facing spiking costs and labor scarcity.
Republicans asked CBO to run their numbers on the 'Build Back Better' proposal, stripping away the gimmick of artificial expiration dates for various provisions. Democrats, after all, openly favor making all of them permanent. They've said so. The bogus sunset language is purely designed to manipulate the CBO accounting to make the legislation appear less expensive. CBO responded to the GOP's request today, and to the surprise of nobody, they determined that the full BBB price tag amounts to $3 trillion in new deficits over the next decade, on top of the existing sea of red ink Washington has incurred:
CBO finds that, if the child tax credit, child care provisions, SALT deduction, health insurance subsidies and more in Build Back Better were made permanent instead of for limited timeline, the bill would add $3.0 trillion to the debt over next decade, instead of $0.2 trillion. https://t.co/BzYWiLAVbe
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) December 10, 2021
This type of new spending, piled atop the trillions in emergency COVID spending shoveled out the door over the past two years, would be insane under any conditions. It is especially insane under these conditions:
WASHINGTON (AP) — US consumer prices soared 6.8% over past 12 months, biggest spike since 1982.
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) December 10, 2021
Inflation in November hit 6.8%. Here are the biggest annual increases:
— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) December 10, 2021
Gas +58%
Rental car 37%
Used car 31%
Hotels 26%
Steak 25%
Utilities 25%
Bacon 21%
Pork 17%
Furniture 12%
Fish 11%
New cars 11%
Chicken 9%
Bikes 9%
Eggs 8%
Coffee 7.5%
Apples 7%
Milk 7%
Flour 6%
Rent 3.5%
Here's Chuck Schumer looking at all of this and declaring that the best solution to it all is...passing trillions of dollars in new deficit spending. It's well and truly ludicrous:
This is their new thing: Whatever happens, it makes the perfect case for what they wanted to do before it happened, even when the exact opposite is true. https://t.co/9KoKUlgf4P
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) December 10, 2021
What matters more is what Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema believe, and as we noted earlier this week, they're sounding understandably skeptical. The White House and Congressional allies insist that the economy is actually thriving. This is gaslighting that few Americans are buying, due to a simple reason laid out in this New York Times analysis:
Offices remain eerily empty. Airlines have canceled thousands of flights. Subways and buses are running less often. Schools sometimes call off entire days of class. Consumers waste time waiting in store lines. Annual inflation has reached its highest level in three decades. Does this sound like a healthy economy to you? In recent weeks, economists and pundits have been asking why Americans feel grouchy about the economy when many indicators — like G.D.P. growth, stock prices and the unemployment rate — look strong. But I think the answer to this supposed paradox is that it’s not really a paradox: Americans think the economy is in rough shape because the economy is in rough shape.
David Leonhardt published that paragraph hours before annual inflation hit its highest level in nearly four decades. We broke down a brutal poll for Biden and the Democrats on Wednesday. Who's up for another one?
13-pt swing = similar to Biden - Youngkin swing in VA
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) December 10, 2021
"So-called urban ring counties (those surrounding cities) favored the D candidate by 8 points in the [2020] presidential vote. Those counties now prefer a Republican control of Congress by 5 points."https://t.co/Bht52SJe8J
Republicans now sport a historic 10-point advantage when Americans are asked which party they prefer to control Congress, holding a 44%-34% margin over Democrats. That’s up from a 2-point Republican advantage in the October survey. In the past 20 years, CNBC and NBC surveys have never registered a double-digit Republican advantage on congressional preference, with the largest lead ever being 4 points for the GOP. “If the election were tomorrow, it would be an absolute unmitigated disaster for the Democrats,? said Jay Campbell, partner at Hart Research Associates and the Democratic pollster for the survey.
Yowza. And that's not even the first national survey showing Republicans up double digits on the 2022 generic ballot. For context, Republicans rarely lead on that metric at all, even in cycles where they perform relatively well (in 2020, they trailed on the generic Congressional ballot average by nearly seven percentage points, then gained 12 net seats). I'll leave you with this:
Biden said inflation was transitory, but it isn’t. He said illegal immigration was seasonal, but it’s not. He said he’d get all Americans out of Afghanistan, but he didn’t. He said he wouldn’t enact a vaccine mandate, but he did.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) December 10, 2021
He’s constantly wrong. https://t.co/yKG78POPNx
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