House Dems begin pushing parts of $3.5T domestic plans
WASHINGTON — Democrats began pushing plans for providing paid family and medical leave, easing climate change and bolstering education through House committees Thursday as they battled Republicans and among themselves over President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion vision for reshaping federal priorities.
Five separate panels worked on their slices of the 10-year proposal, early steps in what looms as a fraught autumn for Democrats hoping to enact a remarkable range of major policy changes.
They face not only solid GOP opposition but internal divisions among progressives and moderates in a Congress they control so narrowly that they can afford only three House defections, none in the Senate.
“We have a once-ina-generation chance to make transformative, beneficial change,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-mass., as his tax-writing panel debated its pivotal chunk of the voluminous legislation. “This is our moment to lay a new foundation of opportunity for the American people.”
Republicans cast the still-evolving measure as an economy killer that would raise taxes, cost jobs, worsen federal debt and make people increasingly reliant on government.
In a signal of the broad political potency they believe the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan offers, they repeatedly conjured that image to belittle Democrats’ economic plans.
“Following the humiliating Afghanistan surrender, now President Biden is leading America on an economic surrender to
China, Russia, Europe and the Middle East,” said the top Republican on Ways and Means, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas.
In an early manifestation of Democratic unrest, one member of the Ways and Means panel said that for now, she planned to vote against that committee’s portion of the bill.
Moderate Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-fla., complained that lawmakers still lacked information on how much it would cost and had not been shown key portions of it dealing with taxes and prescription drug prices. Murphy is co-chair of the House Blue Dog Coalition, whose members include some of Congress’ most conservative Democrats.
“I don’t know how much we’re spending, how much we’re raising, how we’re spending some of the money and how we’re raising any of the money,” Murphy told her colleagues.
Democrats have said they will pay for much of the overall bill by raising taxes on the rich and corporations. They’ve said no one earning under $400,000 annually would face higher levies.
Moderate Democrats
— mostly prominently Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — have said the bill’s proposed $3.5 trillion cost is too high. Congressional Democratic leaders have conceded that the price tag may have to fall to retain moderate votes, causing anger among progressives who want the package to spend as much as possible.
House and Senate Democrats also must still reach agreements on many issues, including key questions about overall spending and revenues.
Top Democrats want to quickly assemble the overall bill, which 13 House committees are crafting, by late September in hopes of moving it through the full House and Senate. That may well prove overly ambitious.
That speed is partly designed to satisfy moderates, whom House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., has told can expect consideration of a separate $1 trillion infrastructure measure by month’s end. Moderates consider that public works bill their top priority, and leaders will need their backing to pass the larger, $3.5 trillion bill.