Following up on a post from October, I wrote this letter to the editor to the Financial Times, which was published today (because of the FT’s paywall, I am setting it out below1):
"Ensuring spending lasts is key to Build Back Better
In “Trade-offs are needed to rescue ‘Build Back Better’” (FT View, December 22), you say “the legislation is mostly funded (though ‘temporary’ expenditures often find a way of becoming permanent)”. Which is exactly the problem.
The Build Back Better program can only be said to be funded in the sense that ten years of revenues are paying for four years of one programme and two years of another and so on.
What is perhaps the most important part of the spending plans – the expanded child tax credit – is only extended for one year.
Indeed one of the few parts of the bill that does last for the full ten years is the increase in the deductibility of state and local taxes from federal income tax from $10,000 per year to $80,000, a provision that helps the rich, mostly in high-tax, Democratic-run states.
If Build Back Better can be resurrected, it must on the basis of a few programmes done well, not a mish-mash of programmes thrown together that sound great but most of which only last a few years. Responsible governance demands nothing less."
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1 The FT edited the letter lightly, including the spelling of “programmes.” This is the letter as published.
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