How the Biden Administration’s Build Back Better Plan Helps China

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about the Build Back Better plan while visiting the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority in Missouri on Dec. 8, 2021. Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

As China sits by and quite literally laughs at the United States, the Biden administration is busy overseeing the biggest climate investment in the country’s history.

As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gasses fails to do anything to reduce its carbon footprint, when will the world recognize one simple fact: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) couldn’t care less about climate change.

At the recent climate summit in Glasgow, U.S. President Joe Biden called it “disappointing” that nations like China and Russia “basically didn’t show up, in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change.” Disappointing, perhaps. Surprising? Not in the slightest.

The “Build Back Better” (BBB) initiative, a program supposedly designed to “rescue, recover, and rebuild the country,” will see Washington invest at least $555 billion in renewable energy and climate change initiatives. As Jim Wiesemeyer of AgWeb recently warned, BBB programs could end up costing “nearly $3 trillion more (emphasis mine) than advertised for a total price tag of nearly $5 trillion.“ He continued, ”that’s roughly three times the figure most of the media have been sharing.”

Instead of “rescuing, recovering, and rebuilding the country,” BBB looks likely to devalue the dollar and drive inflation even higher. Why? Because it happens to be a poorly thought out policy built on the shakiest of foundations.

According to Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), supported by a recent report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, the “Build Back Better” plan “is not only not paid for,” it happens to be a “massive and reckless spending bill” that “relies on $1.95 trillion in new taxes on American families and businesses, as well a 15% corporate minimum tax.”

All in the name of what, exactly? Who really benefits here?

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 26, 2021. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Scott’s concerns are warranted. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the country’s debt is already “slated to reach a new record—over 106 percent of GDP—by 2031. Under Build Back Better, it would hit that record sooner and grow much faster.” Moreover, “even if fully paid for as claimed,” based on “estimates and assumptions of the direct costs of the plans,” debt is expected to “reach a record in 2028 and rise to 115 percent of GDP by the end of the budget window.”

Although the president has promised that the “Build Back Better” agenda is “a long term investment in American families” that “will be fully paid for over the long term” by having the country’s wealthiest people “pay their fair share,” there is reason to think that average Americans will be the ones footing the enormous bill.

Nothing good in this world, as they say, comes for free. If something sounds too good to be true—and “Build Back Better” certainly sounds great to many—that’s because it is.

Which begs the question, why invest a lot of money in green initiatives, especially when countries like China, India and Russia—three of the world’s biggest polluters—continue to pollute and refuse to change their ways?

Build Back Better Benefits Who, Exactly?

While China patronizes the world—urging other countries to do more to combat global warming, but doing very little itself—climate doomists in the West continue to demand more and more from regular citizens.

According to the journalist David Rose, the CCP controls the broader narrative by targeting countries in the West and “seducing their elites.” These “useful idiots,” he noted, “often believe they are acting for the common good, but become blind to Xi’s avowed ambition: for China to achieve global supremacy by 2049, the 100^th anniversary of the Maoist revolution.”

China cannot achieve carbon neutrality and global supremacy. They are mutually exclusive. As the author Joel Kotkin recently noted, while the United States continues to hamstring itself “with its eco-commitments, China, not mandated to reduce its carbon emissions till 2030, continues to build coal plants to maintain its industrial engine.” By 2030, he noted, “when China will be able to shift to nuclear and other alternatives, the West will be effectively de-industrialised, and hopelessly dependent.” The CCP’s masterplan is well underway.

As China, the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, continues to pollute the planet, the United States and its allies continue to pay the heftiest of prices. According to Rose, millions of people around the world, elite politicians included, have fallen for what the CCP calls “discourse control.”

By roping in influential figures and persuading them to drink the climate-flavored Kool Aid, Beijing continues “to shape the way the rest of the world thinks and talks about China.” With the United States doing the heavy lifting, China sits back and laughs, promising climate reform and delivering nothing but pernicious lies.

Sadly, too many of us continue to believe these empty promises. Because of this, China continues to get a free pass.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.