On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks argued that the reconciliation bill should push “money to people without college degrees who are in the working class,” but right now, he doesn’t see that being the approach to what gets taken out of and left in the package.
Brooks said, “Some choices, I think, are quite unfortunate. They’ve put at risk the size of the child tax credit, which I think is the single best thing in the whole bill, which really does reduce childhood poverty to a great degree. Some choices they could wander into could be very good choices. They’ve lost the core of the climate change. But senators like Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, is talking about a carbon tax, and that would solve a lot of things at once. It would help reduce carbon emissions, but also raise revenue to pay for this stuff. And so, I still think a lot is under negotiation. And what I’m looking for is, is there a theme to what they leave in and what they take out? Do they have an overall theory of the case? In my view, we’ve spent the last 40 years funneling money to rich people with college degrees. We should have a big spending bill that funnels money to people without college degrees who are in the working class, and that would be my theme, decide what [comes] and goes. Right now, I’m not quite sure I see it.”
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