Biden's spending plans are now too big to fail

To be clear, this does not mean that Democrats will necessarily pass all of the $4.1 trillion in combined spending envisioned by the two bills. But they are starting off with an extraordinarily high number — the reconciliation bill alone is triple the inflation-adjusted cost of Obamacare at the time of passage. This means that there will be plenty of room to scale back the legislation while still moving the ball forward on many progressive priorities. As currently conceived, the reconciliation bill would offer subsidized child care, universal pre-K, and free community college. It would expand Obamacare as well as add dental and vision coverage to Medicare. It would represent a significant down payment on the Green New Deal. And that doesn’t even include all the goodies in the separate infrastructure bill that Republicans, inexplicably, already signed on to…

Whatever progressives may say during the process, when push comes to shove, they aren’t going to vote down a bill because it’s, say, $3 trillion instead of $3.5 trillion when there’s an opportunity to advance the ball on issues they care about. Just as no conservative is going to vote against a major tax cut — even if it’s smaller than they would have preferred — no progressive is going to nuke trillions of dollars in spending just because they would prefer to spend more.

So, whatever you may read in the fall about Biden’s agenda being doomed, don’t get too excited. Democrats are going to be spending a giant pile of cash real soon.