Biden wants Medicare cut to pay for bill that benefits investors and corporations

The government has once again decided to turn on the American people.

The latest is a multi-trillion dollar boondoggle – pushed behind the mask of infrastructure improvement – that will just use more of our money to add profits to investors and large companies already rolling in cash.

The White House doesn’t even attempt to disguise the details of the payoff, listing its ingredients like some master chef gloating over a menu. The bill includes:

• $110 billion for lawyers, investors and contractors, who will spend decades planning and then possibly building roads, bridges, and major transportation projects – all destined to go over budget and be obsolete when finished.
• $66 billion for the railroad industry, mostly to Amtrak, which is already too expensive for the average American to use, but is popular with the Washington crowd traveling to New York  and Boston.
• $11 billion to hire more bureaucrats for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration.
• $39 billion to zoom up profits for auto and truck companies by destroying current vehicles and replacing them under a “low-no” emission vehicle procurement program.
• $25 billion for airports, which will guarantee their bonds and please investors.
• $17.3 billion for ports and waterways to ensure that goods from China are quickly unloaded.
• $46 billion to “infrastructure resiliency investments” – government talk for hiring consultants to create reports then filed without anyone reading them.
• $15 billion to junk current school buses and ferries, and then enrich manufacturers by replacing them with electric or low-carbon and zero-emission models.
• $65 billion for very profitable broadband companies like Comcast and Verizon, which already charge more than any other country in the world for internet access.
• $55 billion for owners of water companies.
• $73 billion to pump up the bottom line of power and electric companies by reducing operating and capital investment expenses.

How Will We Pay for This?

• The White House will (only) steal $47 billion from seniors by further delaying a Medicare rule by President Donald Trump for three years. That change would have given beneficiaries the rebates that now go to insurers and middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers (PBM). The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had projected that this would actually increase drug costs for seniors by $177 billion over 10 years, not $47 billion.
  
• Take away $205 billion in COVID-19 funds, arguing that much money still remains unspent in relief aid. (We can always appropriate more $$ and call it an emergency.)
• Confiscate $53 billion in unemployment insurance aid that the federal government was providing to supplement state unemployment insurance.
• Raise a “wild guess” $87 billion in spectrum auctions for 5G services.
• Tax chemical manufacturers by $13 billion to help fund the cleanup of Superfund sites, and eliminate that required industry expense.
• Sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for $6 billion, endangering our economy in another oil crisis.
• Strengthen tax enforcement “when it comes to crypto currencies,” to pocket about $28 billion. White House reminder – it’s crypto, so you can’t tax it, just like you can’t tax dollar bills.
• Rely on economic growth to bring in about $56 billion to the Treasury, despite the biggest spending increase in history.

And if you want to be even more depressed:

Biden advisor wants to die at 75