Blind to the Flaws of Build Back Better

Alan Blinder overstates the plan’s benefits and skirts past its true cost.

Letter to The WSJ.

"Alan Blinder’s advice in “Look at Build Back Better’s Benefits, Not Its Price Tag” (op-ed, Dec. 6) is precisely the kind that has put the country on a path to budget ruin. His counsel is offered while the public debt-to-GDP ratio is already higher than it was immediately after World War II. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the public debt is on a path to approach 200% of GDP by 2050.

In claiming that President Biden’s spending plan is fully financed, Prof. Blinder glosses over the CBO’s estimate that the Build Back Better plan will add $750 billion to the budget deficit over five years—when the economy will likely be at full employment.

If now, when the economy has recovered from the pandemic, is not a good time to put the country back on a sounder long-term budget path, when will that time be?

Desmond Lachman

American Enterprise Institute

Washington"