 For months, we watched in horror as provision after provision was taken out of the Buildback Better Act and whatever good remains in it has been watered down to oblivion. So we don't know at this point in time what's going to be in the final bill, assuming it even passes, but one thing that is likely to be included in the bill if it doesn't get killed by mansioner cinema is this. As Common Dreams reports, $285 billion tax cut for the rich is now second most expensive piece of Buildback Better. Jake Johnson explains, a $285 billion tax cut that would predominantly flow to rich households is now the second most expensive component of the Buildback Better Act after corporate Democrats succeeded in slashing funding for a number of key progressive priorities and removing other programs entirely. With the House of Representatives preparing to vote later this week on the roughly $1.8 trillion reconciliation package, The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Democrats planned to raise the cap on state and local tax deductions from $10,000 to $80,000 through 2026 would be more costly than establishing a paid family and medical leave program and nearly twice as expensive as funding home medical services for the elderly and disabled. Over the next five years, raising the salt cap would provide a tax cut only to those who atomized their taxes and paid more than $10,000 in state and local taxes, a group overwhelmingly made up of the wealthy, The Post noted. A recent analysis from the Tax Policy Center says, the tax cut will benefit primarily the top 10% of income earners with almost nothing flowing to middle and lower income families. Sad but predictable. Now in case you're wondering, what's the one thing that costs more than the salt cap reduction? Well, it is universal pre-K and childcare, but there's an issue with that because it's not necessarily going to be universal as it once was because in a write up by Matt Brunig of the People's Policy Project, their childcare plan could actually exclude half of black kids. So we went from a universal program to one that might actually exclude half of black kids and not just black kids, kids of color, more broadly speaking. Now how does this happen? Why is Matt Brunig making this case? Well, you see, rather than just having a federally administered plan, they're going to be distributing these subsidies to states and each state will be able to decide what they want to do with these childcare subsidies. Now, assuming that Republicans are going to be as unreasonable as they usually are and reject these subsidies as they rejected the affordable care subsidies, here's what's going to happen. So look at this map provided to you by People's Policy Project. As you can see, these were the states that rejected the Obamacare subsidy because they didn't want to give Democrats the satisfaction of even having a small victory. So they rejected the subsidy outright, which was totally irrational. Now, assuming that they're going to do the same thing again with this new subsidy for childcare, well, look at the percent of children below the age of three that live in states that haven't expanded Medicaid and look at the breakdown demographically. So if childcare or universal pre-K isn't expanded in these states, you can see that people of color would lose out the most, even though white people would also benefit a lot from this program. But overall, we don't know how these states are going to use their subsidy. We don't know what kind of plans they're going to create, which is why we shouldn't take any chances and just create a universal program, because the universality protects that program and makes it so that way these Republican controlled states can't take these funds and, you know, distribute it in an inequitable way. It just it's so stupid, but this was watered down because corporate Democrats wanted it watered down. But getting back to salt, I want to go to this graphic from the Washington Post. So as you can see, the salt cap increase costs more than the climate change provision, climate change. So they're willing to spend more money on the salt cap increase than they are climate change. I mean, talk about priorities. Now, it also costs more than the one year expansion of the child tax credit and the healthcare subsidies that they're including combined. I mean, this is just comical at this point. Now, going to the next slide here, all of the spending will benefit the top 1% of income earners, meaning that if you make over eight hundred sixty seven hundred thousand dollars annually, you're going to benefit from this bill. Now, if I'm remembering correctly, Joe Manchin said that he wanted to means test a lot of the provisions and build back better because, you know, why waste the money by giving out subsidies or money to families who don't need them? We should really target the most vulnerable. Well, explain to me how this does that. It's just it's absurd. Now, I want to give you some more context when it comes to salt. And this next clip from Steve Ratner on MSNBC, he kind of puts it into perspective for you. He has a very biased take, but his explainer here is actually pretty apt. So the salt cap was actually introduced by Donald Trump in 2017 when he passed his tax cuts for the rich bill. This was included in this. And this video is going to explain why Democrats hate it. So these these these domino blocks, I call them are organized by basically what percent of the residents in each state paid use the state and local tax deduction in past years. And all the way out here, which is Maryland, you can see that they are they were the most frequent users of it. But as you just cast your eye over, you can see that disproportionately the states in which the state and local tax deduction was historically used are blue states, the states in which the state and local state and local tax deduction was not used are historically red states. And so therefore, when the Republicans took aim at this provision, nobody should be confused about elections having consequences. So putting aside his bias, because I'm assuming he would probably personally benefit from an increase in the salt cap. What he's showing here is why Donald Trump did this. Essentially, he wanted to fuck over blue states, right? And, you know, this idea is that, well, if we can make these rich people and wealthy people in blue states miserable, then they're going to move out of these blue states, right? And I mean, why do Democrats care, right? They're supposed to be looking out for the marginalized for labor, right? I mean, that's a joke. I'm saying it to be facetious. But why would they care about salt? Well, these top one percent of income earners, you know, you have to keep them satisfied. If you're a corporate Democrat and you don't raise your money through small grassroots donations, because these people who are going to be getting this salt cap increase, they can fund these campaigns. They can write really big checks and poor people can't do that, which is why Democrats are fighting to increase the cap, undo what Trump did. And the reason why it's here in the first place is because corporate Democrats have stated that they will not vote for a build back better if there's no salt deductions. And this is their red line. I mean, they don't care about climate change. They don't care about health care. They care about salt deductions. Now, Biden actually was considering removing salt deductions, like this is in phase 457 of Build Back Better Negotiations. But it was reported that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer intervened and convinced Biden to keep it in. Come on, man. So, I mean, at this point in time, Build Back Better looks nothing like it once did. We went from six trillion to three point five trillion. Now we're at like one point seven five trillion and everything's watered down. And now we have a tax cut for rich people. And again, that's assuming that it even passes because progressives in the House, except for six, they gave away their leverage. They gave corporate Democrats that infrastructure deal. It's basically a corporate toll road bill. So they voted for that. So now they have no say. They can't make any demands. They can't say, I don't want salt in here. I want, you know, more funding for the childhood tax credit. I want an additional five years. They can't say anything because corporate Democrats know that they can cut it down as much as they want to. And, you know, the progressives have no leverage. They'll still vote for it because at this point they're going to take what they can get. So, yeah, Democrats are squandering this limited window of opportunity to actually make meaningful changes, take transformative steps to improve people's lives. And they shouldn't just do that because it's the good and the moral thing. They should do it because politically speaking, just delivering for voters is good politics, but they just they don't care. And so we get shit like this now with no leverage since, you know, infrastructure has already passed, so we just got to watch the progressives suck it up and vote for this dog shit bill because they gave corporate Democrats what they want. So, you know, at this point they're probably feeling happy if they get anything. And it's just it's really a sad state of affairs. This is bleak shit, but this is American politics. And it's not surprising to those of us who have been paying attention for quite some time.