The $2 trillion is phony too

So much for the good news. The bad is that Democrats want to retain every other big-ticket entitlement in fiscal drag. The biggest trick is a false sunset. News reports say the child allowance of $3,000 or $3,600 will last for only one year instead of five as in the House bill. This will cost $120 billion instead of $556 billion.

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But the sunset is a ruse, since Democrats plan to renew the child allowance ad infinitum. Its real cost over 10 years is $1 trillion and another trillion the decade after that. This is a huge addition to the structural deficit—an entitlement for the middle-class without a work requirement—that will eventually be financed by higher taxes.

The ObamaCare subsidy expansion would reportedly last three years, but that’s also a phony sunset. Paid family leave might be cut to four weeks from 12, but eventually it will grow to 12 or more and extend beyond maternity and paternity leave to elder care and more.

Another reported ruse would start Bernie Sanders’s Medicare expansion to cover dental care as a pilot or more limited program. That could pretend to save $260 billion. But do you think a benefit provided to some seniors won’t soon be provided to all? Any program would create a political lobby of dental groups and others to make it universal.

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