Republicans are justified in opposing Build Back Better bill

Republican Senators Mike Crapo (right), of Idaho, and Rick Scott, of Florida, hold a news conference at the Capitol on Dec. 14. They were critical of the Build Back Better legislation's cost following the Congressional Budget Office's scoring of the bill.Chip Somodevilla/Getty

I cannot allow Globe columnist Joan Vennochi’s assertion that Republicans lied about President Biden’s Build Back Better bill to go unchallenged (“Besides Manchin, who killed Build Back Better? Biden and the Democrats,” Opinion, Dec. 21). How is addicting the middle class to additional unsustainable entitlement programs not reshaping the United States into the progressive dream of a European-style social welfare state, particularly at a time when Medicare and Social Security are facing near-term insolvency? What other explanation is there — other than to capture middle-class voters — for why progressives insisted that the new entitlement programs not be means tested?

Democrats also deceptively claimed that these programs would be authorized only for a short term so they could claim that the bill would “only” cost $2 trillion, when they have every intention of making them permanent. Republicans were completely justified in their arguments against the bill, whether the Globe wants to admit it or not.

Tony Conte

Winchester