If the biggest news is what's not being talked about, then my candidate for the most neglected story would be President Joe Biden's plan for $3.5 trillion in new government spending.
Crazy as my hypothesis may seem, given all the stuff about Biden's agenda on the internet, there has been remarkably little policy debate about it, and remarkably little attempt to persuade the American public that this spending is a good idea.
It's not just that no one knows yet what exactly will be in the bill(s), which seem to be a combined effort of the White House and congressional Democrats. It's that America's intellectual and pundit class isn't paying full attention.
There was more passionate debate about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Tax the Rich" dress.
My colleague Arnold Kling put it well: "With the reconciliation bill, there is no attempt to convince the public that it is desirable to enact an enormous child tax credit or to mandate ending use of fossil fuels in a decade. Instead, what we read is that if you're on the blue team you want the number to be 3.5, but a few Democrats are holding out for something lower."
The Democrats say they might be considering a carbon tax to fund their spending plans, and also to address climate change. You might have expected this news to be on the front page every day, and a dominant topic on Twitter and Substack. Isn't the fate of the planet at stake, or perhaps an economic depression, depending on your point of view?
There was a lengthy and well-done article in the Washington Post on the political risks associated with this plan. It appeared on Page A21 of the paper edition.
A permanent child tax credit expansion could cost $1 trillion and alter many lives, for better or worse. The proposal has been the topic of debate, but America — and its intellectuals — hardly seems obsessed with the topic. Paul Krugman's latest column in the New York Times promotes the Biden agenda based more on its political feasibility than its intrinsic desirability.
