Here Come the "Biden Should Have Got a Better Deal!" Takes

The all-purpose teardown argument for lazy cynics

Democrats announced their social spending package yesterday, and there’s something for everyone to not like. Some think the top-line number of $1.75 trillion over ten years is too small; Bernie Sanders initially proposed $6 trillion, then spent several months reminding everyone how far he came down from $6 trillion, which made me wonder why he didn’t start at $999 jillion so that he’d look really pragmatic. Others are disenchanted by Democrats’ “fund a program for a while and then hope for the best” strategy, which does have a real “have a baby and hope that fixes the marriage” vibe to it. Others dislike the bill from the opposite direction; Kyrstyn Synyma — whose name I can’t spell and I’m tired of looking it up, so from here forward she gets the Lynyrd Skynyrd “every vowel is a ‘y’” treatment — still might tank the whole thing.

Count me among the disappointed. Two of the opinions I mocked in the previous paragraph are opinions I hold; I wish the bill was much larger and I’d rather do a few things well than several things poorly. The bill is chock-full of stuff that isn’t quite what I wanted; the cumulative impact a bit of a letdown. It reminds me of a line some standup had in their act in the ‘90s: “You don’t go to Denny’s — you end up there.”

Well, here we are: Denny’s. You can have a highly-suspect $5 steak, or you can have a big hot plate o’ nothing. Your choice.