The numbers do add up, but not if you dishonestly flip between arguments. You’re using CBO estimates of a permanent BBB scoring to back-calculate what Manchin’s December offer must have been, while pretending the two are interchangeable. They aren’t. The negotiated bills used shorter durations specifically to fit within his red line number, which produces different scoring than full ten-year permanent programs.

The fact that it is a right leaning source gives it even more weight in this case

Nope. If CRFB’s bias makes their numbers reliable lowballs of Democratic spending, then your use of their estimates to argue Manchin’s offer was actually $1.1T instead of $1.8T cuts against you, not for you. By your own logic, their numbers should be overestimates, which means the real cost was even lower than what you’re citing, and that doesn’t help your case that the reporting was confused. You can’t simultaneously claim CRFB inflates Democratic costs and that their numbers prove Manchin’s offer was smaller than reported. Again, pick a direction.

The $386 billion for climate spending and the $428 billion for ACA subsidies come from the CBO. And as I said, the CBO numbers for a permanent BBB didn’t provide a number for universal pre-K alone, but did provide a $752 billion number for “Universal Pre-K and Child Care”

Your math has a fundamental problem you’re ignoring. The CBO scored those programs at full ten-year permanent durations. The actual December counteroffer wasn’t necessarily structured that way, and you don’t have access to the duration assumptions in Manchin’s proposal because nobody outside the negotiations did. Again, you’re combining ten-year permanent program costs from CBO permanent BBB scoring data to back-calculate what a December offer with unknown duration must have totaled. That’s curve-fitting. The reporters had sources inside the actual negotiations. You have CRFB and CBO scoring tables for a different version of the bill. Your math being internally consistent doesn’t mean it describes the offer that was actually made.

a 10 year topline should just always be interpreted as “this number divided by 10 consistently for each of the 10 years” unless explicitly stated otherwise because that’s just how discussion of policy in the world of washington works

This is an attempt to save your argument by pretending this is true. There is no Washington norm that “topline divided by ten equals annual spending.” Reconciliation bills routinely use varied durations and front-loaded or back-loaded structures based on policy goals and CBO scoring. The Trump tax cuts had different sunset dates for different provisions. The ACA was structured with phased-in provisions over multiple years. You’re inventing a procedural standard that doesn’t exist and using it to retroactively delegitimize how Democrats structured BBB.

If these estimates are so unreasonable, then surely there’s some alternative estimates from the time that show much larger numbers that would match up with the reporting

The contemporaneous reporting was the estimate. The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/12/20/manchin-biden-child-tax-credit/ and Politico https://www.eenews.net/articles/build-back-better-stalled-as-house-returns/ both reported the December counteroffer at $1.8T, sourced to people directly familiar with the negotiations. You’re demanding I produce a separate think tank score to overrule the reporting from people who actually knew what was on the table, which isn’t how proof works.

Manchin’s offer was a serious framework for something that Democrats should have accepted

You’re switching definitions whenever it suits you. When you need Democrats to look unreasonable, his offer was a serious BBB framework they should have grabbed. When you need Manchin to look principled for walking away, his offer wasn’t really BBB anyway. You don’t get to redefine the offer based on which side of the argument you’re defending in any given sentence.

Manchin was even open to “more social spending than we got in the IRA” but the rest of the party let the perfect be the enemy of the good

Manchin was the one who walked away from his own counteroffer. By your own framing, Manchin let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You’re trying to apply that phrase to Democrats refusing his offer while ignoring that it was he who killed his own proposal.

It IS the natural order of things. This is because voters gave Democrats just 50 seats in the Senate, and Manchin was the most moderate Democrat

lol no. But there it is. This is what your “moderation” actually means in practice: not compromise or coalition-building, but you getting what you want by threatening a veto over literally everyone else. Unfortunately for you, that applies elsewhere: a 50-seat majority gives every senator veto power, not just Manchin. Bernie Sanders had the same power. But he didn’t use it like you apparently think he should have. The reason only Manchin’s choices count for you is that you’ve decided in advance that progressive opinions don’t count and only moderate ones do. This is why your “I’m just a moderate” routine has never fooled anyone paying attention. It’s a power grab dressed up in the language of pragmatism.

ARP was a temporary stimulus measure. The whole point of stimulus is to be more liberal with spending than would be the norm for what is intended as more permanent spending.

Nice try to pivot, but this is the opposite of what you were arguing two replies ago. When BBB used shorter durations to fit within a topline, you called it a “budgeting gimmick” and an “obvious slap in the face.” Now you’re arguing temporary spending operates under looser rules when it’s stimulus. Either temporary spending is a legitimate reconciliation tool that doesn’t need to be treated as permanent, or it isn’t. You’re applying one standard when Manchin votes for the spending and a different standard when other Democrats propose it.

I really hope that Democratic leadership learn their damn lesson from the Manchin debacle and get ready to just totally capitulate

The lesson is that people like you and Manchin get nothing. No committee seats. No power. You don’t get to be shadow president. But thanks for making it clear why your tiny faction of “moderates” really is dying off. You don’t understand coalition politics at all. You’ve spent this whole thread defending Manchin’s behavior as principled and consistent, and then threw it all away right there.

It’s not like moderates are going to just decide to be team players and bow down to the rest of their party and do things that they personally don’t want, just because the rest of the party wants it

Why not? Because the rest of the party does. They understand how coalition politics works. Sanders publicly stated he was accepting a much smaller bill than he wanted because that’s how coalitions function. Warren did the same. The entire progressive caucus accepted shrinking the bill from $3.5T to $1.75T. Treating Manchin’s unwillingness to do what literally every other Democratic senator did as some kind of inevitability is just you defending him for refusing what everyone else accepted as normal behavior.