The House on Friday narrowly passed the centerpiece of President Biden’s domestic agenda, approving $2 trillion in spending over the next decade to battle climate change, expand health care and reweave the nation’s social safety net, over the unanimous opposition of Republicans. …
The bill’s passage, 220 to 213, came after weeks of cajoling, arm-twisting and legislative legerdemain by Democrats. It was capped off by an exhausting, circuitous and record-breaking speech of more than eight hours by the House Republican leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, that pushed a planned Thursday vote past midnight, then delayed it to Friday morning — but did nothing to dent Democratic unity.
Groggy lawmakers reassembled at 8 a.m., three hours after Mr. McCarthy finally abandoned the floor, to begin the final series of votes to send one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in half a century to the Senate. …
Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened the final push with what she called “a courtesy to” her colleagues: “I will be brief.” She then put the House’s actions in lofty terms.
“Under this dome, for centuries, members of Congress have stood exactly where we stand to pass legislation of extraordinary consequence in our nation’s history and for our nation’s future,” she said, adding, the act “will be the pillar of health and financial security in America.”
The bill still has a long and difficult road ahead. Democratic leaders must coax it through the 50-50 Senate and navigate a tortuous budget process that is almost certain to reshape the measure and force it back to the House — if it passes at all.
But even pared back from the $3.5 trillion plan that Mr. Biden originally sought, the legislation could prove as transformative as any since the Great Society and War on Poverty in the 1960s, especially for young families and older Americans. The Congressional Budget Office published an official cost estimate on Thursday afternoon that found the package would increase the federal budget deficit by $160 billion over 10 years. …
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The assessment indicated that the package overall would cost slightly more than Mr. Biden’s latest proposal — $2.1 trillion rather than $1.85 trillion.
It offers universal prekindergarten, generous subsidies for child care that extend well into the middle class, expanded financial aid for college, hundreds of billions of dollars in housing support, home and community care for older Americans, a new hearing benefit for Medicare and price controls for prescription drugs.
More than half a trillion dollars would go toward shifting the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and electric cars, the largest investment ever to slow the warming of the planet. The package would largely be paid for with tax increases on high earners and corporations, estimated to bring in nearly $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
Savings in government spending on prescription drugs were projected to bring in another $260 billion, though a scaled-back measure to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for some medications was estimated to save only $79 billion, far less than the Democrats’ original $456 billion proposal would have. …
The fact that the bill could slightly add to the federal deficit did not dissuade House Democrats from proceeding to vote for it, in part because the analysis boiled down to a dispute over a single line item: how much the I.R.S. would collect by cracking down on people and companies that dodge large tax bills.
The budget office predicted that beefing up the I.R.S. with an additional $80 billion of funding would bring in just $127 billion over 10 years on net. That is far less than the $400 billion the White House estimates it would bring in over a decade, both through enforcement actions and by essentially scaring tax cheats into paying what they owe.
The legislation is moving through Congress under special rules known as reconciliation that shield it from a filibuster, allowing Democrats to push it through over unified Republican opposition in the Senate. …
… Mr. McCarthy, the minority leader, took advantage of the House’s so-called “magic minute” — a custom that allows leaders to speak without time constraints when they are granted their minute of floor time.
He held the floor well into Friday morning, railing for more than eight hours against the bill and the Biden administration, breaking the record for the longest consecutive House speech set by Ms. Pelosi in 2018 before he concluded at 5:10 a.m. Some Democrats pointedly walked out before he began to speak, and at times interrupted his speech against the bill with boos, heckles and jeers.
“Every page of all this new Washington spending shows just how irresponsible and out of touch the Democrats are to the challenges that America faces today,” Mr. McCarthy said during his diatribe, which appeared designed more to rally his Republican base behind a message for the midterm elections in a debate that had been scheduled to last just 20 minutes. …
… The vote showed remarkable Democratic unity, given the struggle to get to it. A group of moderate and conservative holdouts, wary about the size of the bill, had held out for an official estimate before they would commit to supporting it.
But after the release on Thursday of section-by-section assessments from the Congressional Budget Office, the official fiscal scorekeeper, most were swayed. White House officials met privately with the group Thursday evening to walk them through the administration’s analysis and the budget tables, according to a person familiar with the discussion. …
For Democrats, the bill is perhaps the last significant opportunity to push through their domestic policy ambitions: an array of environmental provisions, federal support for education and child care, and the fulfillment of a longtime campaign promise to tackle the soaring cost of prescription drugs. …
Representative Jared Golden announced ahead of the vote that he would vote “no” on the bill, but he left the door open to supporting it should some of the provisions change after the bill goes to the Senate. “To start: tax billionaires and stop tax giveaways to millionaires,” he tweeted.
(The vote was 213 No, 220 Yes, 1 Present. There is one vacancy, so that’s all 435 votes accounted for. The ‘Present’ vote was apparently from a GOP member.)
Apparently GOP Reps Liz Cheney & Adam Kinzinger of the House Select Jan 6 Insurrection Committee hope to redeem themselves, having not added to the majority to avoid adding further insult to their party.
<a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/us/politics/house-passes-reconciliation-bill.html?smid=tw-share”>House Narrowly Passes Biden’s Social Safety Net and Climate Bill</a>
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
ReviewBastard Keynesianism: The Evolution of Economic Policymaking Since World War II by Lynn Turgeon; The Indebted Society: Anatomy of an Ongoing Disaster by James Medoff, Andrew HarlessDaniel Fusfeld https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-bush-2005-wait-pandemic-late-prepare/story?id=69979013 George W. Bush in 2005: ‘If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare’
A book about the 1918 flu pandemic spurred the government to action.
By Matthew Mosk * [Honest intellect is practically an oxymoron in itself, but it does exist although it rarely commands more than a brief moment of attention by either policy making elites or the broader public. However, the no one could have imagined nor no one could have know alibis do not hold water, not for the 2008 financial crisis, not for the Covid-19 pandemic, and not even for the 9/11/2001 terrorists attacks.]
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
House Narrowly Passes Biden’s Social Safety Net and Climate Bill
(Editing problems – sorry about that.)
Maine’s Jared Golden the only Democrat to vote no on Biden Build Back Better Bill
(The vote was 213 No, 220 Yes, 1 Present. There is one vacancy, so that’s all 435 votes accounted for. The ‘Present’ vote was apparently from a GOP member.)
Apparently GOP Reps Liz Cheney & Adam Kinzinger of the House Select Jan 6 Insurrection Committee hope to redeem themselves, having not added to the majority to avoid adding further insult to their party.
<a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/us/politics/house-passes-reconciliation-bill.html?smid=tw-share”>House Narrowly Passes Biden’s Social Safety Net and Climate Bill</a>
[Define presaged.]
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05775132.1997.11471979?journalCode=mcha20
ReviewBastard Keynesianism: The Evolution of Economic Policymaking Since World War II by Lynn Turgeon; The Indebted Society: Anatomy of an Ongoing Disaster by James Medoff, Andrew HarlessDaniel Fusfeld https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-bush-2005-wait-pandemic-late-prepare/story?id=69979013 George W. Bush in 2005: ‘If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare’
A book about the 1918 flu pandemic spurred the government to action.
By Matthew Mosk * [Honest intellect is practically an oxymoron in itself, but it does exist although it rarely commands more than a brief moment of attention by either policy making elites or the broader public. However, the no one could have imagined nor no one could have know alibis do not hold water, not for the 2008 financial crisis, not for the Covid-19 pandemic, and not even for the 9/11/2001 terrorists attacks.]
Holey line editor, Batman.