Biden calls deal ‘godsend’ for families
WASHINGTON » President Joe Biden declared his support Thursday for the “historic” inflation-fighting agreement struck by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and holdout Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, an expansive health care and climate change package that had eluded the White House and seemed all but lost.
Biden said the bill will be a “godsend” for American families.
“This bill would be the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis,” Biden said.
He said it will also lower health care costs for millions of Americans who buy their own health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
Biden vowed the package will not raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year. Instead, the 15% corporate minimum tax will help fund the new costs, with extra going to deficit reduction.
He acknowledged the final product was a compromise but was upbeat that it would win support in Congress.
“My plea is: Put politics aside. Get it done,” Biden said. “We should pass this.”
The $739 billion package, not as much as Biden once envisioned, remains a potentially remarkable achievement for the party, with long-sought goals of addressing health care and climate, while raising taxes on high earners and large corporations and reducing federal debt.
The Senate is expected to vote on the wide-ranging measure next week, setting up for the president and his party an unexpected victory in the runup to November elections in which their congressional control is in peril. A House vote would follow, perhaps later in August, with unanimous Republican opposition in both chambers seemingly certain.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told fellow Senate Democrats they now have an opportunity to achieve two “hugely important” priorities on health care and climate change, if they stick together and approve a deal he brokered with Manchin.
Schumer spoke at a private meeting after the startling turnaround over an expansive agreement he and Manchin struck that had eluded them for months. The Democratic leader’s comments were relayed by a person familiar with the meeting and granted anonymity to discuss it.
Manchin called the billion package a “win-win” that shouldn’t come as such a big surprise despite the long months of on-again, off-again talks. He bristled at suggestions he’d left his own party dangling when he refused to support an earlier, broader bill.
“I’ve never walked away from anything in my life,” Manchin told reporters via video chat because he is isolating with COVID-19.
Manchin called it “a good bill” that would benefit the country. “It’s a Democrat and Republican bill.”
But bipartisan the bill is not.
Schumer warned his colleagues in the 50-50 Senate that final passage will be hard. With staunch GOP opposition, Democrats have no votes to spare, relying on their own razor-thin majority.
One key vote, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., was still reviewing the agreement, said spokeswoman Hannah Hurley. Sinema backed Manchin last year in insisting on making the legislation less expensive but objected to proposals to raise tax rates, and the spokeswoman referred a reporter to her comments last year supporting a corporate minimum tax.