The Details of the Reconciliation Bill as We Know It

CLAY: We finally got the details announced of exactly what will be in the budget reconciliation bill, and I am reading from this right now. The framework cost is $1.85 trillion. Of course, that is not an accurate rendition of what this truly costs because it’s not expanding off into the future. They term limit this, and the reality is this is a $5 trillion to $7 trillion cost in the years ahead. But this is what is in the bill.

There’s “$555 billion to fight climate change through tax incentives for low-emission sources of energy, $400 billion…” By the way, I’m reading from the New York Times, which has this bill itemized, just FYI. This has just come out in the last hour or so: “$400 billion to provide universal prekindergarten to 3- and 4-year-olds and to,” they say, “reduce health care costs for working families earning up to $300,000 a year.”

There’s “$200 billion to give parents a tax credit through 2022,” to basically pay parents for having their children, “$165 billion to reduce health care premiums, $150 billion to reduce a waiting list for in-home care, $150 billion to build one million affordable housing units, $100 billion for immigration streamlining,” and we gotta get into what exactly these details are because this is just a rough outline, “to reduce a backlog of nine million visas.”

And remember, House Democrats have already passed a bill that would bury immigration costs into this budget reconciliation bill that would help to lead to more citizenship. Again, the details here are devilish indeed and we don’t have all those. And then $40 billion for worker training and higher education. Okay, that adds up to $1.85 trillion, and they are saying that they have offset the cost of the $1.85 trillion with tax increases.

How do they get there? Again, this is a rough outline released today by Biden administration. There’s a “15% minimum tax on large corporations, efforts to reduce profits shifting,” whatever that means. I guess more aggressive IRS coverage, which has been disputed, “1% tax on corporate stock buy-backs, increased enforcement with the IRS.

“An additional 5% tax on incomes exceeding $10 million a year and another 3% tax on incomes above $25 million and efforts to limit business losses for the wealthy and an additional 3.8% Medicare tax on people earning more than $400,000 a year who didn’t previously pay that tax.” All right. That is a massive amount of information that has all come down in the last hour.