President Biden announced a "framework" this morning for scaled-back BBB legislation that would cost about $200 billion per year. Here are the biggest elements:
- Extension of improved Obamacare subsidies through 2025. Good.
- Universal pre-K. Good.
- Child care subsidies that limit costs to 7% of income. Good.
- Long-term care. Good idea, but probably hardly noticeable to taxpayers in the form Biden has proposed.
- One year extension of increased child tax credit. Meh.
- Lots of money for climate change, but nothing much for R&D. Such a wasted opportunity.
There are a few other items on Biden's list, but these are the biggest. Whether Sens. Manchin and Sinema are willing to sign up for this, along with Biden's proposed revenue increases, remains to be seen. The plan includes an additional 5% tax on incomes exceeding $10 million a year and another 3% tax on incomes above $25 million.
Um . . . I thought it came to $1.8 trillion, which would be $180 billion per year. No?
And, if some of the programs are less than ten years, it's not 180 billion each year, it's more near term and less in the later years.
Kevin may me referring to ‘new’ spending. Some fraction of Biden’s program gets funded from unspent Covid-related allocations.
There's plenty of money to potentially be invested in climate stuff and R&D. What they need are customers and contracts - have the federal government give Carbon Engineering a contract to pull 1 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, or Prometheus Fuels a contract to produce 1 billion gallons of e-fuel at a certain price. Give them that, and they could get the investment capital.
Kevin, you should get off the R&D kick. There is a reason very little money goes to R&D; it's already been done, but very little is commercialized because there is no price on carbon.
Ah, yes, the carbon tax! Politically toxic! Why? Because it would work. The only things that are not "politically toxic" are things that won't.
No, we don't have cheap energy storage. We don't have carbon sequestration, and many other things, even if some things we have now are cheap enough - which they aren't without subsidies.
Its all cheap enough. I have it on my house.
I will define "cheap enough" -- current cost of solar produced Kwh of more than 25,000 kwh per year and stored (Tesla Powerwall) kwh of over 10,000 kwh per year is 16 cents per kwh. Retail cost of such energy is 19 to 23 cents, and if you are unlucky enough to not live in the city of Los Angeles it can go up to 40 cents.
Points:
1. The Powerwalls are obviously there to (a) make sure we get to use all the energy produced during the day overnight, and (b) cover outages. So its not an "additional 10,000 kwh per year" that's the amount of energy we routinely use overnight that people without battery back up get from the grid. Since it may be occurring to someone at this point cost of just the solar would have been about 11 cents per kwh.
2. One might wonder, if Yikes has this, why not everyone?
3. Answer, part A: The wholesale cost of energy is about 3 cents per kwh. The rest of my bill (and your bill) is the cost of the grid and maintaining it. We are thus in an odd situation where it is less expensive to have your own powerplant than buy power from the utility, but that is only because of all the expense the utility has in maintaining the grid. By the way, its not because of any subsidies, the 16 cents is the unsubsidized cost.
4. Answer, part B: Since this is a technical crowd, I will then give the technical answer as to a barrier to widespread adopotion. First, we are a long way from being able to simply eliminate the grid. First, in my opinion, regulated utilities need to shift their pricing from volumetric which includes the grid to volumetric (i.e., charging based on the amount of power a consumer uses) which does not. Currently, its as if a person was charged for roads based on miles driven. Instead, the government provides infrastructure for "free." "Free" is in quotes because of course we all pay taxes and there is a federal and state gas tax per gallon. But the point is that streets and hwys are provided first, people who drive electric cars or ride a bike can contribute to climate control and at the same time pay less by not buying gasoline.
Utilities, of course, have about had it with home rooftop solar, because one way they look at it economically is simply a loss of revenue, often from wealthy users of alot of electricity, and they have to maintain the same grid anyway.
All we need is to encourage battery back up in the same way we encourage personal solar. Actually, the battery back up is more important -- you can easily fit a Tesla Powerwall in a closet of an apartment, and that apartment would then be able to used stored energy from solar as opposed to gas powered nightime plants.
Utilities, of course, do not want to pay 16 cents per kwh for something they now pay 3 cents for. That is what a utility sized solar farm and battery back up would cost.
Part C of the answer is oddly, in some parts of the US electricity is cheaper than solar plus batteries, and if you live in a non-sunny place the same cost does not produce the same kwh.
However, subject to the manufacturing capacity, the solution is available now, and affordable now.
Its not like nuclear fusion or something.
So, its cheap enough. Its not so cheap that all utilities will adopt it tomorrow, but compared to frying the world to a crisp its cheap enough now.
We need all of the above.
Powerwalls are great, but eventually, we'll be facing shortages of lithium. There is also the issue with some other metals and minerals used that come from conflict zones. Also, battery recycling needs work.
It would be great to see home storage take off in a safe way. And check building codes--just sticking them in a closet might not work. But we'll need more/better storage--so R&D still needed.
And what was you capital outlay?
My capital outlay was zero ($0).
Total cost of the system was $58k. At no money down the solar loan payments over 20 years (the warrantied life of the system) was about $380 per month, vs. average electric bill of $500. You could get a better interest rate, but for apples to apples I think the comparison is price per kwh over 20 years for the system vs. price per kwh for 20 years for the utility. I did not factor in that the utility may raise prices.
After much noodling, what it comes down to is buying energy, and since utilities price it per kwh I think the best move is to convert the price of a system to price per kwh.
I should say that due to economics of scale utility level solar is closer to 3 cents per kwh than an individual buying it, but utilities are not that interested in battery storage as they have perfectly serviceable gas peaker plants already, and in any event they might rather have wind (which blows at night).
The costs are really not in dispute, its the implementation. Utilities don't like being told what to do. Voters don't want any more expense, in one case, even the union which stood to lose a few jobs if a gas powered plant closed got in on the act.
I just wanted to point out that it is not a case of lack of technology.
If by technology cheap enough to deploy at scake for sub/urban areas, then no, no we don't. I don't know what your personal energy needs are (the people I've known who've made this claim have invariably had an -- ahem! -- more modest lifestyle than me and mine.)
As to those better (cheaper) batteries: I'll believe you when I see them actually in use at the local grid level.
Hi Scent,
Because we have two EVS, we use a lot of electrons- average more than 2,000 kWh per month.
My main thought on this is that you have to separate spending on stuff you hope will work- like say some form of social spending or excess military spending - from spending on stuff which will, guaranteed, work. Solar and energy storage will work when there is the political will to implement it.
Take WWII, we knew how to build warships. Prior to the war, no one imagined the scale of the spending and the number of ships, but with the proper incentive - we built them, by the tens of thousands.
If we spent the same amount on solarizing the economy we could do it by 2025, easy. If we don’t, it’s not because we can’t
Did I miss something here? I don't have an electric car, but I thought I was a pretty heavy user of electricity. Still, at $500/mo. you were paying five times my average bill from Southern California Edison, and -- based on your numbers -- if I were able to install a system comparable to yours it would triple my expense for electric power. So the technology exists, but -- again, based on your numbers -- I don't see a wave of solar conversions taking place in the LA area any time soon.
I should have said my comment is in reply to Yikes.
Well, SoCal Edison is 20 cents per kWh so you’re using like 500 kWh per month.
You can just by a system 1/4 the size I bought and it would only cost $100 month,
Solar systems can be as small or big as will fit on the roof
This is the point where Senator Sparklepony invents a new objection - strictly procedural, mind you - in order to try to force the Progressive wing to fold again, and then trashes it anyway.
There's my prediction for the next 48 hours.
Nah, I expect she's into the "pass the BIF first as a sign of good faith and that's all I'm saying" stage of her one-woman show.
The obvious move in that scenario is for Biden himself to tell Congressional Democrats to pass both bills, get them to his desk, and he'll sign them both on the same day.
If there ever comes a time where Manchin is on board but Sinema isn't, they should call her bluff and go ahead and schedule the vote anyway. If she casts the deciding no vote, her career would certainly be over come 2024.
Manchin is a completely different case because he is the most liberal Senator that West Virginia will possibly elect nowadays, and has every incentive to be seen as "centrist" and maintain a brand of standing up to the national Democratic party.
I get that, but what he's opposing at this point isn't gun control or making Karl Marx's birthday a federal holiday or whatever pisses off West Virginians, but stuff like childcare and healthcare. When I last looked, even honest, hardworking folks up the holler need those things.
I am mystified by Manchin’s opposition. Any voter in West Virginia who is focused only on the cost of Build Back Better is certain to vote Republican, because the Republican candidate is certain to declare that the number should be $0.
I don’t think it’s particularly mysterious. I discern a very logical, albeit it cynical, immoral, and throughly despicable reason for why Manchin can kill stuff that would be beneficial and popular with West Virginians.
Since these are core Democratic programs, which are strongly opposed by the Republicans, he isn’t likely to be attacked by his opponent for vetoing the same things Republicans oppose. But in so doing, he might attract some number of Republican or independent voters who prefer Republican policies but also have some affection or affinity with Manchin.
By contrast, the fact that Manchin is notationally the Democratic Party’s candidate completely insulates him from criticism for his actions by his fellow Democrats. Whether these programs would benefit West Virginians is evidently not a part of Manchin’s calculus of values.
I don't think she cares about keeping her Senate seat. She cares more about securing money and attention for herself, and there are lots of ways to do that after giving the finger to all the people who voted for her.
Gloria thought that she was more or less in the middle of the pack in terms of redness. A little bit more redness on her ass but not an excessive amount. Obviously way more than a slut would normally get while being ridden by a black man or even after being raped by several black men but not so much as to suggest regular beatings for disciplinary reasons over the past two weeks since the last inspection for girls on that cycle. So it was clear that she’d displeased an African pretty seriously within the last day or two. And her two or three worst stripes were very bright, very fresh stripes and overall Gloria’s ass was significantly worse than most of the girls, whose asses were either unblemished or showing fading redness or maybe one or two well faded stripes. What would make the difference was whether her overall good record at inspections was going to outweigh the pretty significant crop of stripes and a lot of red on her ass since she’d had her last inspection, when she’d also had a lot of red and more stripes than a good slave should’ve had.
Two bad inspections in a row was worrisome. But only slightly. The immediate problem was that she would indeed be fortunate if the black inspecting her simply made her have the plugs with the pain-givers up her ass and her pussy. Gloria guessed it was even money whether she’d also be taken to the front of the room and punished, either by being beaten or perhaps even with a correction rod being used on her. And being taken to the front for punishment was intensely humiliating and, worse, would increase her chances of later being sent for remedial obedience training.
@Mitch
Did you get you novel-in-progress mixed up with your comments on Kevin's blog?
It's only because there's no edit function on this blog.
And basically nothing, rien , nada , ничего такого, ingenting , ei mitään for handling climate breakdown.
Those pesky “progressives” are whining and whining but one has to sacrifice something in a negotiation and the future of our children and grandchildren can wait until later, it’s more important to keep the big donors happy… after all , the midterms are closing in.
The United States of America will arrive at the climate meeting in Glasgow with an empty briefcase.
Representatives from the United States of America will just strut around trying to impress , trying to act as if you are leading the fight against climate breakdown.
You sure aren’t, even the lying Chinese has more to present
A comment from a disillusioned Swede
Suck it Sweden. The US doesn't exist to do Sweden's bidding, even on something as important as climate change. Sweden can always step up and form its own coalition to fight climate change, if it's frustrated with the US's response to it.
It's really tiring to hear from Europeans about how the US needs to lead on some issue, when Europeans have their own ginormous organization - the EU - that could be leading on that same issue. I mean, if the EU demanded that everyone it does business with meets some kind of climate goal, it would be hard for anybody but the US and China to avoid complying. But I don't hear from the disillusioned Swedes about how the EU is also bringing nothing to the table at these climate change gatherings...
One could find a lot of articles in US mainstream media before and shortly after the election boasting about how USA/Biden intended to take the lead on climate, again,
You never did lead and nothing much has come out of all the talking, sadly.
When it comes to Sweden and EU… well you should maybe check up on what’s happening outside of our backyard before you comment on another nation or region
Good night my friend, it’s getting late over here
Ireland has had to srep up & implement a Climate Bill to meet EU targets for emissions, or face fines. EU is not perfect but it is 10 years at least ahead of US on climate. Only far right parties in Europe deny climate change.
This is what didn’t happen…
https://joebiden.com/climate-plan/
👍🏼
I would like to understand how kevin is managing to spin this as only 20 billion per year. If Ken is right and he is not counting the portion being funded from unneeded covid funds, and I assume also is just taking the ten year total and dividing by ten, this fundamentally dishonest.
On using covid funds, the point when they were passed was we were in an emergency and so were willing to spend " whatever it takes " without the normal budgetary constraints. So you authorize something like the max possible assuming worst case need. When that worst case does not materialize ( which should be the case if it truly was worst case), you do not get to later just say we will spend it on things not related to that emergency and that does not count as spending.
And kevin had argued that it is unfair to discuss these bills, as has been standard for years , with a ten year price tag . Which is an arguable point. And, if the spending and revenue changes are spread relatively evenly over the ten years , maybe fair to say it costs x per year by dividing by ten.
But when you play games by having things expire within the ten years, so the extra spending is heavily front loaded while extra taxes are back loaded, taking the total and dividing by ten is just plain dishonest.
Why not just then look at 100 years and say it costs 2 billion?
Kevin's spinning is verging more into just lying.
BBB -difficult to see that as other than Better Business Bureau…
Or an iffy bond rating …
I see that kevin changed the 20 billion to 200 billion so that 20 billion in initial post was just an error . He did change it somewhat covertly which makes anyone now seeing my prior post think I cannot read . But it really did say 20 billion an hour ago!
Based on this correction, I can retract any claim of dishonesty with respect to offsetting amount from covid funds ( I think unless that is already part of the 1.75 trillion and the dishonest built in).
But still stick with it being totally misleading to just divide the total by ten when the amount is so front loaded . Either use the ten year figure or the cost for year one alone . Especially when the expiration after x years is clearly fake and they do not really intend for them to expire then .
Archive dot org early.
Archive dot org often.
The problem is how do we talk about this rationally when the vast majority of folks out there have no idea what any of these numbers mean in context. And what is the proper context ? I guess you are arguing for only using the total cost of BBB over it's lifetime (which for much of the proposal is 10 years) . But we don't talk about most of the rest of our federal budget that way. No one says the entire budget will be 60 trillion dollars. Or that Defense spending alone will be at least 4 times as much as BBB over the same 10 years, let alone that our GDP will be close to 150 trillion dollars, making the BBB slightly less than one and a half percent of GDP. In that light, I'm not sure limiting the way we talk about the cost of BBB to the total amount over it's lifetime isn't more misleading than what Kevin has done.
It is absolutely more misleading.
Now I think Kevin has an arguable point that we should talk about annual costs and not ten year costs. But then you need to give the actual annual figure for the relevant year, presumably the first year. And then the amount for other years if discussing those.
And this is especially true if using all the gimmicks they are using here with pretend expiration dates that are not serious.
What this is like is if a married couple on a budget has a used budget car . The free spending spouse wants to buy a new sports car instead. The parsimonious spouse says but we only have room for an extra $ 1000 per year over the $5000 per year budgeted for our current budget car and this new car will cost an extra $ 5000 per year. So response is to buy the new car , keep it only three years and then have no car and take the bus saving $1000 per year as bus costs $4000 . So , over ten years, it costs $15000 for three years and then saves $7,000 for next seven . So net cost is only $8000 or $800 per year.
And this is what this bill is doing. It is getting the ten year cost down by simply faking an expiration of things that nobody intends . And , if they happen, would be real bad public policy to start a program and then end it after a few years.
So the whole 1.75 trillion cost is a dishonest fake and will absolutely be much more when these programs are extended as planned . And kevin wants to say even using 1.75 trillion is unfair. OK gives is just the actual cost year one.
If manchin and sinema are actually agreeing to this , it does expose them as frauds . As any real principled objection to this level of spending could not be satisfied by such sleights of hand .
Also note these figures everyone is using are NOT based on scoring by the budget office. Non partisan estimates, guessing at what really is in there, are significantly higher.
What happens if they get a " deal" now, and when actual language is scored, the budget office says cost is higher and does not pass recirculation requirements? If they have to reopen negotiations to tweak it, does it all fall apart?
If I were the hard line progressives, I might worry that mabchin or sinema can agree to the unscored bill, get infrastructure passed, and then not agree when scored accurately or to the needed changes. Without actually breaking their word .
The difficulty I have with Kevin’s approach is that it seems to be simultaneously a “centrist” realism criticism of the unworldly liberals combined with an unacknowledged reality that there isn’t going to be a miracle which would allow unrestrained consumption of fossil fuels even as this miracle of R&D rolls back climate change.
Realistically, the countries, companies, and billionaires who are preventing reductions in fossil fuel consumption are not going to give up the benefits to them until it’s too late. At which time it will, of course, be too late. One can conceive of technology that will help to stop climate change when used in conjunction with the rapid phase out of fossil fuels but there’s not even an indication of anything beyond self delusion that requires no sacrifice by fossil fuel companies. Money spent on R&D is wasted if there’s no larger plan or will to deal with incumbent fossil fuel companies.
This never had R/D in it.
Well… that was an awful lot of drama to get a bunch of stuff few will even notice. And we don’t even have it yet.
I agree with the comments about Kevin being overly obsessedmwith R&D as the solution to the climate crisis. As Brett said, much of the basic research has been done what is needed is implimentation. Wind and solar are currently the most economic new energy supply in many places. Rationalising regulations to this new reality is a major challenge. I live in Alberta, Canada and evne here solar is viable and wind is the prefered solution even if our provincial government doesn;t understand this reality. Incentivising the use of clean electricity should be the major focus of any medium term energy policy and David Roberts seems to think this package will do atleastr some of that.
Everything Sinema has done this year, beginning with the little thumbs-down dance on the minimum wage, has been consistent with an intention to take credit for (a) the "bipartisan" roads'n'bridges boondoggle, and (b) the "bipartisan" defeat of the "extreme left's recklessly irresponsible welfare spending spree". That would also be consistent with her 2018 victory speech, in which she spent most of her time praising the virtues of "bipartisanship" and the mavericky awesomeness of her idol the maverick John McCain. Who is (in)famous for keeping his party guessing about his vote on repealing the ACA until he voted "No" on the floor.
Consequently House progressives would be seven kinds of fool if they passed the BIF in the hope the BBB would get through the Senate. The current impasse should remain until Manchin and Sinema have given unqualified, public commitments about the BBB bill they will vote to support. Even then I wouldn't trust them, but it's about the best progressives can do given the idiotic "Let the Senate take the lead with two separate bills" strategy.
"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twi....you ain't gonna fool me twice!"
KD, fooled for the umpteenth time by Manchin/Sinema.