That said, inside the White House there is a sense that their push was hurt — materially so — by the media’s description of Build Back Better as a “social spending” bill and not an economic one.

The legislation does contain components that would have immense impacts on society: from expanded access to health insurance, to opening up avenues for free education, to historic investments in climate change and the lowering of prescription drug costs. For that reason, the shorthand descriptor of “social spending” has been used across the media ecosystem, including in this very outlet you’re reading right now.

But the White House has long argued that the Build Back Better initiative is about economic stabilization; that the point of the bill was to make it so families could get to work more easily, have less anxiety about the care of their children, and access the tools and education that would place them more firmly in the job market. The bill was constructed off Biden’s American Families Plan, which, while less about economic “recovery,” was pitched as “an investment in our kids, our families, and our economic future.” The Fourth Estate’s decision to present all this under the rubric of social welfare, they contend, has hurt the bill politically.