Larry Kudlow: Some say spending bill will be 10,000 pages and no one knows what's in it

So, what did they hide and when did they hide it? 

Key Democratic committees, House Ways and Means and Senate Finance, are marking up massive unheard of spending and taxing plans right now as we speak, but they are not telling the public what they're really up to. 

So, the answer to what did they hide and when did they hide it is they're hiding it now, but information is starting to leak out on specifics. 

There's no question that the Democrats want this $3.5 trillion reconciliation, which is really going to be over $5 trillion to avoid public scrutiny and to roll rapidly through both houses just to get it done. Some say it's going to be a 10,000-page bill and literally no one's going to know what's in it. 

I remember on this show a month or so back when Senator Shelley Moore Capito (who is a friend) when I asked her if she read the 2,000-page infrastructure bill she smiled and said she got through half of it and she was one of my great Senate hopes that actually might know what's going on in the second half of the bill. 

PELOSI SAYS CONGRESS HAS ‘SEVERAL OPTIONS' ON DEBT CEILING AS PARTISAN BATTLE LOOMS

This one—10,000 pages worth—no one will know. Trust me. Not before, during or after.

 It will take many years to figure this out and that's just the specifics. In terms of the negative consequences, we won't know for many years after that. 

Joe Manchin's idea to "pause" the process is a good one if he sticks to it. Where his track record is not fabulous but hope springs eternal. 

There's such a thing in Congress as regular order. Got it? Regular order, know what that means? It means even in highly partisan bills, the normal process is an open markup to thoroughly examine and debate key proposals.  

Policy experts on both sides of the aisle testify in open session to discuss these massive new programs. This is a time-honored tradition. 

After the public testimonies, members then go back and discuss and then they vote inside the committee to bring it to the floor of the Senate. This is not happening.  

Instead, democrats are hiding the policies, foregoing any discussions and avoiding score cards from the CBO and joint tax committee, but that scoring will eventually come. 

The reconciliation instructions explicitly call for deficit reduction by not less than $1 trillion over the 10-year period (2021-2031). 

Trust me on this one, there will be nowhere near a trillion in deficit reduction. Instead, there will be significant deficit increases even with the largest tax hike in over 50 years. 

Republican senators on the Finance Committee have just issued a press release calling for a full and open markup. Don't hold your breath folks.   

Now, I don't want this process issue—important as it is— to obscure the unprecedented cradle-to-grave spending increases. 

This will generate an unprecedentedly high social safety net expanding Medicare and Medicaid, expand the funding for childcare, universal pre-k, expanded refundable child tax credits paid monthly, food stamps, school nutrition, free community college, income supplements and workforce training programs. This amounts to unprecedented dependency on government welfare and far-left progressive planning schemes. 

I just think of it as 'go woke, go broke'. It’s redistribution on a grand scale.  

Take from Peter to pay Paul. We used to laugh at that. 

When workfare was introduced by Clinton and Gingrich 25 years ago, we thought this kind of left-wing wish list would never come to pass. Workfare worked and the economy flourished. 

This is no workfare and no work. In fact, take the "r" out of work and you have "wok."  

Sure, go ahead and add an "e." It still works, it's still woke. 

As our next guest, the great Art Laffer has pointed out, redistribution has damaged both sides. 

Those whose success is penalized and those who depend on welfare lose all initiative to work, the economy suffers and, speaking of economic suffering, the list of tax hikes being hidden by the tax committees, though starting to leak out today, is truly unbelievable. 

Of course, we knew of the center piece policies of corporate taxes, international taxes, capital gains taxes, individual taxes, small business taxes, estate taxes —all that stuff has been out there for quite a while—a tax assault on business and investment which will cripple the economy, generate higher inflation, and paid for mainly by the blue-collar middle-class workforce. 

Wait there's more. 

In a desperate revenue search, the Senate Finance Committee is looking at a stock buyback tax, a corporate alternative minimum tax, a tax on so-called high salaries, a tax on CEO pay disparity, a tax on unrealized capital gains, a tax on carried interest, an end to the 20% small business deduction, a tax on estate planning, limits to active business losses, a tax on so-called mega retirement accounts, new bank reporting requirements for all depositary inflows and outflows, a plastics excise tax, a carbon tax, a fossil fuel tax, and what amounts to an international tariff on carbon emissions. 

Now, the sum total of all this is to inflict major damage on the economy and the middle-class workforce and investors and consumer price hikes. Leading economic models have already scored this, but now the democrats are adding to the tax damage. 

Of course, that doesn't include additional measures that will be hidden in a 10,000-page bill like illegal immigration, amnesty, unionization, the so-called pro-act and lord knows what else—of course, the Green New Deal. 

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

This is the democratic wish list to transform America by exponentially raising the welfare state and exponentially punishing the productive side of the economy. 

This is a transparent effort to give big government socialism a humongous boost and bury free enterprise capitalism.  

If and when all these details get out to the public, the vast majority of Americans are going to hate this. 

The vast majority of Americans favor free market capitalism and oppose big government socialism.  

That's precisely why the Democrats are doing as much as they can to hide these policies and get the legislation passed before anyone gets through reading the first 500 pages, let alone the last 9,500.