Call it “The Letter That Phil Swagel Wrote.”
The letter from Phil Swagel, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, sent a letter to Congress stating that
“The Congressional Budget Office and the staff of the Joint Committee on
Taxation project that a version of the bill modified as you have specified
would increase the deficit by $3.0 trillion over the 2022–2031 period.”
In short, members of Congress asked the CBO “What would happen if the programs in the bill would be made permanent (which they almost always are made permanent). The result? The Letter That Phil Swagel Wrote: Federal Deficits would increase by $3.0 trillion over the next 10 years.
The Center For A Responsible Federal Budget is even more glaring. The permanent cost of Build Back Better is $4.73 trillion … and a deficit of $3.01 trillion.
Here is all 2,466 pages of the Build Back Better Act (or Build Back Deficits Act).
The Penn-Wharton Budget Model estimates that — if Congress follows White House policy to make most provisions permanent — then Build Back Better will reduce the long-term GDP by 2.8 percent, reduce wages by 1.5 percent, and reduce work hours by 1.3 percent. The only thing it will expand is government debt, by 25 percent.
Build Back Badly?