The Democrats are going for broke on their spending bill. Literally. That $3.5 trillion dollar price tag ain’t nickels. But what’s it for? Something good? Something bad? What difference does it make, said WaPo’s Catherine Rampell to a stupidly grinning Brian Stelter.

Now, she pretends to be saying the opposite. She complains in this clip that it’s “about the number” instead of about the specifics of the “good ways” or “bad ways” it’s being spent. But that’s fake criticism. Libs in journo clothing do that all the time. She isn’t demanding the answer of anyone. Is she asking Nancy Pelosi? No, she’s griping on Reliable Sources (part of the media) about how it’s the MEDIA that isn’t doing their job.

Fake. Criticism. It’s just hot air to downplay the price tag. Which is why her ACTUAL agenda, pretending that 3.5 trillion IS nickels, was so ready to go:

Catherine Rampell said her "number one priority" was to dispute what she claimed was a misleading narrative in the media that inflated the amount of spending in the bill.

"There are good ways to spend a huge sum of money," she said. "The kind of media coverage we have been getting doesn't really explore whether the kinds of things that are in this bill are meritorious or not … Instead, it's about the number."

Stelter asked, "Why is that 3.5 trillion figure misleading?"

"Because it doesn't really represent anything. It's this weird shorthand that's been used but, in fact, the bill will not cost $3.5 trillion in the sense that it will be entirely, or at least partly, paid for," she responded. 

Rampell continued, "The actual cost in terms of deficits will be smaller than that. Perhaps, even zero – although I think that is unlikely. And it's not even fully spending, it's not right to call it a $3.5 spending bill, because there's probably about a trillion in tax cuts in there, too. So it's really hard to boil down the essence of what this legislation is because it does so many things and because they're still negotiating over the basic parameters."

Stelter interjected, saying, "Yeah, and it will be over 10 years … and isn't the broader point … they're trying to do everything at once in one big bill?" 

"Well, it's partly what you just mentioned, it's partly that we don't have majority rule in the Senate … [so the Democrats] have to cram everything into this one major piece of legislation … They have to do climate, they have to do paid leave, they have to do child care, they have to do green energy tax credits for cars and things like that. They have to put everything into this legislation because they can't do piecemeal regular-order bills because the Senate doesn't function like that way anymore," Rampell said. 

Rampell's response invited an avalanche of criticism and mockery.