It's Not Really a $3.5 Trillion Bill

Peter Coy explains what the real fiscal impact of the bill is. Apples to apples, it really a $875 billion bill.

The $3.5 trillion spending plan from President Biden is at risk in Congress partly because $3.5 trillion strikes people as a lot of money. Which, of course, it is. But the net cost of the plan, after taking into account offsetting tax increases and spending cuts, is only one-quarter as big.
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if Donald Trump’s signature legislative achievement, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, had been measured the same way as Biden’s plan is being calculated, it would have been called a $5.5 trillion package. It never was — it was described appropriately as a $1.5 trillion piece of legislation (later revised by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to $1.9 trillion) — because Republicans and Democrats alike took into account that the Trump bill contained offsetting tax increases and spending cuts.