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Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

The Build Back Better bill (or reconciliation bill) is the only real climate legislation that will plausibly be signed into law in the United States in the 2020s. It offers a meaningful path forward for the US to curb its carbon emissions.

Opposing it means you oppose doing anything about mitigating the climate crisis within the United States from a federal legislative perspective within a timeframe where we can reasonably imagine stopping temperatures from increasing past 1.5° or 2.0°C.

It is revenue neutral and paid for by increasing taxes on the richest Americans and corporations. That’s why Apple and Disney are opposed to it. Notably, their tax liabilities will still be lower than they were in 2017.

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> Opposing it means you oppose ...

If life were so simple. Of course, the reality is this bill covers everything from child tax credits, paid leaves, to god knows what else.

Oh no, god forbid we try to drag ourselves into the 21st century, and get somewhere close to what every other modern democracy has offered for decades.

You say that, but I get the feeling we've been here before. Pretty much every time there is an ambitious and expensive spending bill after a couple of years it turns out that the 21st century is still ahead. Eg, Obamacare would probably have been described as dragging the US into the 21st century and getting somewhere close to what every other modern democracy has offered for decades. And yet it turned out not to, the rhetoric is still that US healthcare is pretty bad.

There needs to be some scepticism about what these bills actually achieve rather than what people would like them to attempt to achieve. And when trillions are involved there is going to be massive corruption in the political process.

Fallacy. A step in the right direction is still better than taking no step at all.

Politicians always claim that what they want to do is a step right direction, are they correct?

I don’t know US politics, US law, economics, so I can’t possibly tell if this bill is actually good or bad for anything.

This is simply not true.

If a car is barreling towards you, taking a small step towards safety is wasting the time you could have spent jumping out of the way.

Not only do you end up just as dead as you would be if you had done nothing at all, but you've wasted the effort of making a decision and moving; effort you could have spent on more pleasant thoughts if you had just decided to die from the outset.

Even worse, a moderate decision is harder to make than a firm one. Instead of just doing what could be effective, you have to figure out what could be effective, and cut it in half. By the time you've finished your calculations, you won't even have time to make the useless step.

A democracy does not work the same as a human brain trying to prevent an accident. It works with compromises and majorities. Therefore my point still stands.

>Eg, Obamacare would probably have been described as dragging the US into the 21st century and getting somewhere close to what every other modern democracy has offered for decades.

Uhm, no. Obamacare is basically a Republican brainchild, mostly conceptualized by the Heritage Foundation in the late 1980s. I wouldn't describe it as dragging the US into the 21st century... more like dragging it barely into the 20th century.

>And yet it turned out not to, the rhetoric is still that US healthcare is pretty bad.

US Healthcare is pretty good. But also extremely expensive at the same time, with lots of people unable to afford it, even when they have health insurance thanks to huge co-payments. You keep hearing the stories of severely injured people screaming they do NOT want to go to the hospital because they cannot afford it, and of other people who are brought to the ER, then amass huge debt in a short time that bankrupts them, and then they end up dying very prematurely anyway because the actual life-saving treatment or surgery is something they couldn't afford before, and certainly cannot afford after seeing the initial ER bill.

Waiting a few months at worst for a hip replacement surgery in Germany seems fine compared to waiting for hip replacement surgery forever and never actually getting it in the US because you cannot afford it even though you worked two jobs your entire life. All the while the US spends 17% of their GDP on health care, bout 5% points more than most other western nations.

That's the state of affairs after Obamacare. And yet, Obamacare still made things better than before for a lot of people.

Obamacare didn't make anything better. The simultaneous Medicaid expansion made things better.

I'd agree that the Medicaid expansion was far more effective than Obamacare in improving things, but Obamacare had some positive outcomes too.

> There needs to be some scepticism about what these bills actually achieve rather than what people would like them to attempt to achieve.

That's not how it works. If you want the bill to seem like a wise decision, you name it something like WISE or SMART. If you want to make it seem like it would work, put the word "effective" somewhere in there. If polling indicates widespread support for universal programs, make sure to stick the word "universal" in there.

Everything's marketing, we can just market ourselves to death. Most of US politics is the mastery of baby boomer tone anyway: that bland assertive 80s speech pattern that makes boomers think you're a wise steward and a moderate, nuanced hand. For that matter, part of it is to repeat the words "complex" and "nuanced" a lot, especially when referring to "challenges" and "responses."

So it seems you agree this is not about climate change.

I'm sure many of these things are worthwhile, but a climate change is a big enough problem by itself. If you try to do everything at once, you're likely fail them all.

> get somewhere close to what every other modern democracy has offered for decades.

Yes, just come closer to the clusterfuck the rest of us have. In every country most people say “healthcare in this country is a mess”, and yet, my best experiences with healthcare have been in the US.

We don’t know if the bill is revenue neutral because we haven’t seen the final version yet.

No. One can oppose the bill for lots of reasons, including a lack of faith that any of the taxes, regulations and spending will have the effect you and the politicians who wrote it think it will. Or one might oppose it because one thinks it doesn't go far enough. Either way mind reading isn't helpful.

> that will plausibly be signed into law in the United States in the 2020s

Its 2021... not a chance you can claim that. One thing that is certain is that the US wont pass the 3.5 trillion dollar bill - there is zero path forward for it at this point.

Redistricting plus midterm effects means that Democrats will lose their trifecta in January 2023. They’ll be unlikely to regain it, if they’re lucky, until the end of the decade. The party of climate denialism (the ones that start with R) isn’t going to get on board with climate legislation.

Also where do I state any certainty about the price tag?

So its not revenue neutral.

Revenue neutral doesn't mean you can't increase taxes. It just means the funding isn't based on borrowing.

"Revenue neutral" just means a bill will not increase government revenues.

edit : You can downvote me all you want, it isn't going to change the definition of the term.

https://definitions.uslegal.com/r/revenue-neutral/

I suppose you may be right that revenue-neutral is not the right word, or at least people are starting to use it in a new way focusing more on debt than tax.

It is pretty clear that what Biden tweets about is the impact on debt, not taxes: https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/sep/29/can-joe-biden...

or another way to put it: https://babylonbee.com/news/thief-assures-victim-the-robbery...

Why not just have a clean climate bill? This is just political nonsense.

If this is true then maybe the fault lies partially with the bad-faith legislators who have stuffed the bill with a Christmas wish-list of items that suit their agenda but have nothing to do with climate change, thus making it harder for the bill to pass?

While this sounds truthy, would be even better if you have refs on what's been stuffed in.

Nope. That’s just playing politics.

“Yeah the bill has a lot of terrible parts to it, but if you don’t support it you just don’t care about the earth”.

Nonsense.

I dont if it s revenue neutral if it means being absolutely not neutral on the people and groups contributing most to society's finances.

If that s the case then I agree they have a right to complain, if just on the fact nobody's made responsible but them for something that is everybody's fault.

It is a massive spending program that gives government too much power, probably will harm our infrastructure and any impact on climate is purely speculative.

I am pretty sure a lot of digging holes and filling them back up kind of work just for the sake compliance. I hope the bill does not pass or even if it passes future admins roll it back.

This bill isn’t a focused climate or infrastructure bill. That’s the marketing dressing for a widely scoped bill where only 23% of spending is for infrastructure. In actuality it includes many radically left-leaning policies, which moderates on neither side of the aisle can support. A prominent example is that it included changes to immigration that would grant citizenship for 8 million illegal immigrants, which luckily the Senate parliamentarian shot down. That’s not a climate bill - that’s a power grab that intends to reshape the electorate and dilute the voting interests of legal citizens, particularly Republicans, since this cohort would overwhelmingly vote Democrat. People have many complex reasons to support or oppose any bill, just as they do with any candidate. It isn’t as black and white as you’re painting. If supporters of the bill truly felt climate was a critical issue, they would create a much tighter bill that has as few reasons to garner opposition as possible.

I have never heard this particular angle on this bill, and would hope that it's wrong. Can someone confirm/deny with some references?

To be fair, the only example of the “many radically left-leaning policies” that they provided was one that had already been removed.

I’m not quite sure what we’re confirming or denying here.

My understanding of how bill making works, anyway, is that there are usually riders or provisions like this that are known to be, shall we say, sacrificial. They make useful bargaining chips when seeking concessions.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/571724-democrats-make-ca...

It doesn't "grant citizenship", just provides a pathway for "Dreamers, temporary protected status holders, agricultural and other essential workers" to "getting permanent legal status or a green card". Which may then lead to citizenship if they meet the requirements.

Ah. So it does have more than climate change issues in it.

As a Canuck, I see this as a huge US weakness. These megabills, riders and such.

The parent's point is valid. If people cared, really, really cared, it would be a single purpose bill.

It would be more effective too, in that, people could legitimately say... this is only about climate change. Nothing else. What part of this do you object to?

Right now, it clearly is not, and lo and behold, people can easily reject it, and even have very valid reasons for doing so.

I suspect if the US political system weren't so dysfunctional, there wouldn't be any need to roll it into a single mega bill. I don't think it's about caring or not caring. Indeed to suggest that it's evidence that people don't care about it, those are your own projections. I don't think they make sense at all.

> What part of this do you object to?

Given the lack of success of, well, any major climate change action in the US, this quality would probably not provide much.

If you take it a step further, ask why do we need to use reconciliation and a single megabill, the problem becomes the Senate.

The Senate already gives heavy weight to less populated conservative states. add the filibuster rule - which a simple majority can get rid of - and it just amplifies the power of white, conservative men who vote to get re-elected or build for a presidential run. They're voting for what appeals to something like less than 40% of the population.

We're talking about giving DREAMers a path to citizenship which is supported by over 75% of voters...

I think people really care. It isn't their top issue but it has very broad support.

it does look like there is some movement on a standalone bill with at least a couple Republicans supporting it. But I wouldn't hold my breath though. [1]

As the original comment shows, one side views it as a 'power grab' to 'dilute' voting power... That's a pretty narrow view and to me reads a small shade of likely racial bias.

And back to state elections of Senators, that rhetoric is what wins votes for many of these Rs and that's what drives their decision making. Money too. But that's used to win votes.

One hears the same argument against universal vote-by-mail and other anti-suppression measures. A 'vote grab'.. yeah that's the point we should encourage more people to vote!

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/us/politics/congress-docu...

Mega bills happen in Canada too. Lots of random stuff is snuck into budget bills, often for similar reasons -- especially in minority parliaments. It allows a kind of brinksmanship; approve the budget or we have an election you'll lose seats in. Harper was particularly fond of them, since most of his term was in a very confrontational minority government.

I feel like the distinction you’re making is not particularly interesting. It grants a pathway to citizenship to likely-Democrat voters who currently don’t have a pathway to citizenship. So sure there is a process, but it doesn’t change the impact of such a policy.

I wish more people found being truthful and acurate interesting.

Instead hyperbole and outright falsehood abounds and nobody is held accountable for what they say.

This is the funny part, isn't it? The article talks about opposition to a bill but doesn't clearly name the bill or even explain its actual contents. The closest it gets is a link to another article that talks about two bills - a social policy bill and an infrastructure bill. One would think that an article in 2021 of a bill or a proposed bill could have a direct reference (preferably a link) to the document in question.

From the article that's linked to in the article:

>The social policy bill could be transformative for millions of American families. Though the details are fluid and the overall package almost certain to shrink, the proposed legislation would extend the child tax credit, establish universal pre-K education, create a federally paid family and medical leave system, in addition to an array of programs to combat the climate crisis and transition the country toward renewable energy. The plan would be paid for by trillions of dollars in tax increases on the wealthiest Americans and corporations.

Maybe Apple and Disney are against the apparently myriad other things in the bill rather than the programs to fight climate change?

And the reason why they are bulked into a single bill is to utilise the budget reconciliation procedure which bypasses the filibuster.

I think the filibuster has some merit. If you want to do something controversial (to the point that the opponents are willing to do the physical effort of making speeches 24h a day to stop it), there must be a strong majority of 60%, not just 50%. But there must be some sort of cost to filibusting.

> to the point that the opponents are willing to do the physical effort of making speeches 24h a day to stop it

That is a common misconception. The modern filibuster doesn't actually require legislators to work that hard and is now generally purely procedural.

I agree, it used to, and it should. There must be some sort of penalty to use it only when it really matters, and a physical penalty is one way to do it.

> I think the filibuster has some merit. If you want to do something controversial (to the point that the opponents are willing to do the physical effort of making speeches 24h a day to stop it), there must be a strong majority of 60%, not just 50%. But there must be some sort of cost to filibusting.

In theory, yes. But in practice the US is a two party state, and parliamentarians usually vote along party lines ( because, at the very least, that party controls if they can run for re-election or not).

The US needs proportional representation like.. a few decades ago.

Since the Senate is not even theoretically a proportional house (like the House of Reps is supposed to be but can't be due to the cap on members), demanding a 60% member threshold to pass every single bill means the number of voters it takes to pass a bill gets into ridiculous 70-80% territory.

It does not make any sense in any universe to take a legislative body that is already counter-majoritarian and then add on even more counter-majoritarian rules and procedures on top.

The thing about 'real' filibusters vs. the pretend one in the US Senate isn't just that they cost something, it's that they are generally doomed to fail if that's all you have.

Even endless talking has historically been rarely enough on its own to prevent a bill from passing in most legislatures. It can be an opportunity to bring attention to the issue and make legislators have to listen to their voters, or to convince other legislators to reconsider. But something else has to happen or eventually the bill will have to be tabled anyways.

But I think people fail to recognize this, because the concept of filibuster in the US has been so thoroughly distorted by this broken rule. Even if the filibuster required actually doing an endless talk, it would still not be sufficiently democratic if they could simply run out a clock and the bill was defeated -- in fact, that would perhaps be even worse since it would allow any given member to exercise an unreasonable amount of control over the body as a whole that currently at least requires some degree of unity among the minority party.

>Maybe Apple and Disney are against the apparently myriad other things in the bill rather than the programs to fight climate change?

They have enough billions so if this bad PR had an effect they would have released a cool designed webpage and a cool video explaining why their move is correct and how they are very green, maybe next week on their strategist thinks is the most effective time this will happen. Anyway I would not waste a keyboard press to try to defend this giants, there are people very well paid to do this job.

> intends to reshape the electorate and dilute the voting interests of legal citizens

Even if this characterization of the bill were accurate, those people would then be legal citizens. Are they then diluting their own voting interests? At any rate people being born also dilutes voting interests, should we end that too, or are only people born to it inherently worthy of citizenship?

Anyways, what, precisely, makes these people's interests less valid than those citizens? Most of them are paying taxes and working and raising families. They're literally asking to be subject to the same rights and responsibilities as citizens are. Wow how horrible.

Many of them are DREAMers too

Why is it relevant that some were DACA eligible? They’re still illegal immigrants, and it doesn’t impact the reality that granting them deferred action changes the future electoral power for each party significantly due to birthright citizenship. DACA wasn’t even a proper piece of legislation, but an executive order, which makes it even more one-sided.

Respectfully, I’m not sure what point you’re making here. Yes this bill would exploit our political process to legally admit many future citizens. I don’t think that makes it ethical, just as I don’t think it was ethical for McConnell to exploit a technicality around a SCOTUS nomination, or for either party to exploit executive orders as a means to legislate. I view the interests of illegal immigrants as less valid because they’ve violated our laws in arriving here in the first place. Crimes normally result in citizenship not being granted to otherwise legal migrants, and the same should hold here. The reason this amnesty is under consideration at all is because it is a shortcut to political power, granting one political side more future votes relative to the other.

"exploit our political process" is a funny way to say "change the law around immigration".

What's the exploit here? We aren't even talking about an executive order here are we? We're talking about an element of a bill being passed through the legislatures of the land. Exactly the mechanism that laws are supposed to go through to change.

Anyways the people who are most viciously opposed to immigration are also the very same people who exploit illegal immigrant labor and have a vested interest in keeping an eternal underclass they can abuse, so you'll forgive me if I have very little sympathy for the 'side' that claims adding more citizens and giving more people intimately affected by the law the right to vote is an 'end run around democracy'.

Also, many of these people had no choice in their alleged "law breaking". Holding people accountable and punishing them for their parents bringing them into the country when they were children is incredibly cruel. Insisting that they should never be able to obtain citizenship in the country they grew up in on top of that because they broke a law that holds almost no moral value would be just pure evil.

Also, the 'exploit' that's actually being abused right now is the comically absurd procedural filibuster, which never should have been a thing in the first place. It, frankly, wasn't wrong to reduce the threshold for supreme court nominations to 50 votes in the senate -- it's wrong to tie up every single vote in a filibuster no one has to actually put anything on the line for.

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