Programs that have big existing constituencies behind them-- early education (teachers’ unions) and community colleges (community colleges) — get funding. Biden’s plan to increase Medicaid by $400 billion to cover more home health care services is a big deal for the Service Employees International Union. (This latter plan is moderately transformational, since it would shift payments to home care and away from nursing homes.) New programs -- which almost by definition don't already have a built-in lobby -- have less of a chance in Biden’s “breathtaking” reorientation. A national “guaranteed jobs” plan would be an example of such a program. It’s part of the “green New Deal.” but its beneficiaries don’t exist yet and unions hate it. It doesn't have a chance. What’s really ambitious about Biden's plans appears to be mainly that he’s proposing to do all his expansions at the same time, seemingly heedless of the threat of inflation (if, as widely expected, the tax hikes he proposes to pay for the plans don't get through). But there's no one big new thing you'll be able to point to and say "Biden did that." For $6 trillion, I want a big new thing -- like a universal health care program to replace the current stratified kludgework of Medicaid/Obamacare/private insurance/Medicare. Instead, there’s now a danger that Biden is pissing away the funds a future Democratic president, with a bigger Congressional majority, might use to establish such a system.