The late Senator Everett Dirksen once said, “A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” More recently, Speaker Pelosi expounded, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.” While we do not yet have the final text of the Democrats’ “Build Back Better” social welfare and climate change legislation as of this writing, because of daily changes, we do have enough documentation to assess some of its major themes and conclude in a Dirksenian way that they amount to “real money.”
Counting explicit expenditures and scored tax credits for equity and justice items in the legislation, I found 145 separate provisions or programs costing $167.684 billion. This sum does not contain scores from the Congressional Budget Office. Included are programs and grants where the main, or sometimes only feature or requirement for the budgeted spending is equity or justice narrowly focused on a particular racial or ethnic group, specific geographic areas, certain types of workers, or people with bad personal experiences. The allocated funds range from $1 million for general program administration to $10 billion for down-payment assistance to first-time, first-generation homebuyers (however determined), and $11.7 billion for low-income housing tax credits.
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