HOUSE OKS NEARLY $2T SPENDING BILL
Republicans oppose social safety net, climate measure
The House narrowly passed the centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda Friday, approving $2.2 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, 220-213, 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, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, 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 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.
“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,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, adding that 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 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 Thursday afternoon that found the package would increase the federal budget deficit by $160 billion over 10 years.
“It puts us on the path to build our economy back better than before by rebuilding the backbone of America: working people and the middle class,” Biden said in a statement. He urged the Senate to swiftly pass the measure.
The assessment indicated that the package overall would cost slightly more than Biden’s latest proposal — $2.2 trillion rather than $1.85 trillion.
Republicans, who have railed for months against the measure as a costly initiative that would steer the nation toward socialism, wasted little time in promising to try to
weaponize it against Democrats in next year’s midterm elections.
“This bill would worsen inflation by pumping trillions of dollars in wasteful spending into the economy, give tax cuts to the wealthy, hike taxes on middle-class families and add hundreds of billions to the national debt,” Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement that derided the bill, which Biden has called the Build Back Better Act, as “Build Back Broke.”
“Americans will see through their lies, and the RNC will make sure voters
don’t forget the Democrats’ failures come next November,” McDaniel said.
The bill 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 are projected to bring in another $260 billion.
The fact that the bill could slightly add to the federal deficit did not dissuade House Democrats from voting for it, in part because the analysis boiled down to a dispute over a single line item: how much the IRS would collect by cracking down on people and companies that dodge large tax bills.
The legislation is a key piece of Biden’s domestic policy agenda, paired with a $1 trillion infrastructure package the president signed into law this week. Its path to Friday’s vote was arduous, from midsummer to deep autumn, with negotiations pitting liberal lawmakers against centrists and House Democrats against senators.
And from the beginning, Republicans — who made it clear they could never support a package of the scope and ambition Biden had proposed — were cut out of the talks. While some Republicans voted for the infrastructure measure, they unanimously opposed the social safety net package, arguing that it would constitute a dangerous encroachment of the federal government into every aspect of American life and would exacerbate rising costs across the country.
“Only a few Senate Democrats can protect American families from these radical and painful policies,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader. “It is up to them to kill this bill.”