What is in the reconciliation or Build Back Better infrastructure bill?

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Bad infrastructure

A poor family carrying off food aid - 

they're not infrastructure

This bill is still being debated among Democrats, so the final terms could change or the bill might not ever reach a compromise. Two generally staunch conservative Democratic Senators, Manchin and Sinema, dislike spending on the American people. Both are corrupted by powerful special interests hell bent on protecting their power and profits regardless of negative impacts on the public interest, the environment and climate, or anything else. 

Manchin has been bought by coal and oil interests and is generally anti-environment. Sinema is bought by the pharmaceutical industry and she fights to keep drug prices for Americans bankruptingly sky high. No Republican in congress is likely to vote for the reconciliation bill because Republicans hate government and nearly all domestic spending. 

If Manchin and Sinema cannot be coaxed, bribed, bought off with earmarks or otherwise convinced to vote for this bill, it will fail and so will the first bipartisan infrastructure bill because House progressives will not vote for the first ~$1 trillion bill (discussed here yesterday) if Democrats cannot agree and pass the second bill, which focuses on "human infrastructure."

Investopedia summarizes key provisions of the reconciliation bill as of Oct. 28, currently negotiated at ~$1.85 trillion in spending, some of which is intended to occur over a period of 1-5 years. 

• On Oct. 28, Biden announced a scaled-down $1.85 trillion Build Back Better compromise, down from an original ~$3.5 trillion, hoping that would be enough to get progressives to vote for the bipartisan bill 
• $1.75 trillion of social infrastructure funding, and an additional $100 billion in immigration spending, contingent upon an affirmative ruling by the Senate parliamentarian
• $400 billion for childcare and universal preschool, which is projected to save most families more than half of their childcare spending by providing two years of free preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old in America and additional funding for childcare
• $150 billion for home care, which expands home care for seniors and the disabled
• $200 billion for Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Credit, including extending expanded Child Tax Credit for one year and additional funds to extend the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit
• $555 billion for clean energy and climate, including a proposal to cut greenhouse gas pollution by over a gigaton in 2030; other provisions include reducing consumer energy costs, helping to create more clean air and water, and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs
• $130 billion in Obamacare credits to expand subsidized healthcare coverage, reduce premiums for more than 9 million Americans, and deliver healthcare to uninsured people in states that are not enrolled in expanded Medicaid coverage
• $35 billion Medicare hearing coverage, but dental and vision coverage got removed by Manchin and Sinema, 
• $150 billion for housing affordable housing, including construction and rehabilitation of homes and payments for rental assistance and housing vouchers
• $40 billion for higher education and workforce, including increasing Pell grants and post-high school education opportunities including through apprenticeship programs in underserved communities
• $90 billion for equity and other investments, designed to achieve equity through investments in maternal health, community violence interventions, and nutrition 
• $100 billion for immigration if approved by the Senate parliamentarian; spending is to reform the immigration system, reduce backlogs, expand legal representation, and make border processing more efficient and humane.
• Partial funding by imposing a corporate alternative minimum tax of at least 15% on companies whose financial statements show at least $1 billion in profit (Manchin and/or Sinema are likely going to reject this based on some past comments they have made about funding sources → they oppose taxing rich people and wealthy corporations, but are OK with taxing the rest of us fools)

What has been cut out of the current proposal:

• Paid family leave. Democrats initially wanted 12 weeks of guaranteed paid family and medical leave, then scaled it back to four weeks. Ultimately no paid leave made it into the framework.
• Medicare dental and vision benefits.
• Medicare drug pricing. The ability of Medicare to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies was also cut from the final framework.
• Free community college. Expansion of Pell grants and apprenticeship training remains, but free community college was taken out.
• Billionaires income tax. This funding plan, which would have taxed the unrealized gains of certain assets of around 700 of the richest taxpayers in the country and helped fund the legislation, was removed.

The purchasing power of pharmaceutical industry campaign contributions to Sinema is manifest in the Medicare drug pricing bullet point. She has been paid to protect that sector of the economy. Drug prices for Americans will continue to be generally unaffordable.

There is no mention of going after some of the ~$1.2 trillion in annual tax cheating that the FRP (fascist Republican Party) constantly defends in its ruthless quest to strangle and kill the federal government by depriving it of money. Honest taxpayers are, as usual, screwed because they won't or can't also join the perennial festival of tax cheating.

This reconciliation bill focuses on human infrastructure, but the FRP does not believe there is such a thing and it should not be funded. Other industrialized countries have been spending for decades on the things that are both still included in and cut from this bill. One major difference between the civilized industrialized countries and the US is that their governments generally put the public interest before special interests, while the US usually does the opposite.

Questions: 

1. Should the public support this bill? Or, is the FRP and its alarmist, hair-on-fire rhetoric, e.g., (i) there is no such thing as human infrastructure, (ii) climate change is a hoax, and (iii) controlling drug prices would be a gigantic catastrophe, basically correct and therefore this bill should be opposed? 

2. Comparing this reconciliation bill, including what is in and what is cut out, with the "bipartisan" bill discussed yesterday, is there meaningful bipartisanship left in the FRP, or does it now operate mostly in bad faith for special interests? Or, are the two parties mostly alike and their differences on infrastructure mostly or completely just posturing?  

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