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Commentary By Brian Riedl

Trillions and Trillions

Economics Tax & Budget

The Democrats are poised for the largest permanent expansion of government in at least half a century.

After spending months trying to cobble together enough votes to pass individual pieces of their expensive agenda, congressional Democrats have decided to throw caution to the wind and buy a ticket for the full jackpot.

They have announced an agreement on a budget resolution that includes $3.5 trillion in reconciliation instructions for new tax and entitlement changes. This is in addition to the infrastructure deal being negotiated with Senate Republicans that would include $600 billion in new spending, and an 8.4 percent discretionary spending increase that would raise the spending baseline and thus likely cost $1 trillion over the decade. Another $1 trillion would come from renewing policies that currently use fake expiration dates to hide their long-term cost (after all, no one believes lawmakers will actually allow the child tax credit expansions to expire).

Continue reading the entire piece here at The Dispatch

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Brian M. Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.

This piece originally appeared in The Dispatch