The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
DeLauro’s moment in the sweeping reforms for children
Democrats in Congress really, really want to pass not just a traditional, roads-and-rails federal infrastructure bill, which would bring some $5.3 billion in new cash to Connecticut, but also a larger, sweeping “social infrastructure” reform with trillions of dollars to help families with children, expand Medicare and a nod in the direction of climate change.
It’s a mess, like everything else in Washington, D.C., with skirmishes between and among parties, and little clarity about such minor details as what’s in the bigger bill.
But that’s where Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the New Haven Democrat at the helm on spending bills, comes in. More than any other person, she’s identified as the face of the most important sections of that social infrastructure dream: A permanent, expanded child tax credit with cash payments for the poor; universal preschool; and paid family and medical leave of the sort Connecticut passed two years ago.
After 18 years of proposing an expanded child tax credit — “refundable,” meaning families that don’t earn enough to pay income taxes would collect cash — DeLauro’s moment has arrived. Will she see it through?
Dems control the Senate and the House of Representatives, though only barely, and of course, the White House. So the juice is poured. The groundwork for this historic act was laid as part of the pandemic relief. And the mood is right for legislation to dramatically cut child poverty, led in large part by the 78-yearold DeLauro as the powerful chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
Much of what DeLauro wants did happen earlier this year as part of the American Relief Plan — a $3,600-per-child tax credit, for example — but it reverts in 2022 back to the smaller, narrower credit weve had for the last 24 years.
“I’m proud to say we’ve decreased childhood poverty, we’ve decreased hunger among children, DeLauro said.
Clearly, this would not have happened if President Joe Biden had lost to the previous occupant of the White House. Former President Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 on fixing the nation’s creaky roads, bridges and airports, then did nothing in four years other than to tell states they’re on their own, basically.
All Trump had to do was roll out a roads-and-rails infrastructure plan just like the $1.1 trillion version on the table now — which the Senate passed with 19 Republican votes — and he’d still be in charge. We would not be talking at all about the social infrastructure reform, a dramatic reform for families with children, like Social Security and Medicare was for retired people and the designated hitter was for old home run hitters in baseball.
But it’s not proving easy. On Friday, the House canceled a scheduled vote on the $1.1 trillion infrastructure plan, the one the Senate already passed, because many Democrats were nervous they wouldn’t get a later vote on the second, larger plan.
“It’s taking us longer than anticipated,” DeLauro told me this week, “but actually we’re talking about the end of the month.” We shall see.
To review, on the left, and in the middle, we have Dems who want the two bills to happen together, or at least as part of one plan. A few moderate Dems — famously Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — say no, the $3.5 trillion price tag over 10 years is too much, especially coming after $5 trillion in pandemic relief and Trump’s $1.7 trillion tax break. All of that is exploding the U.S. debt, which may or may not matter.
Republicans, for their part, are happy to see the Dems squabbling and in fact, House GOP leaders put out word that members shouldn’t vote even for the infrastructure plan many support, the better to deepsix Biden’s whole agenda.
DeLauro, like any disciplined athlete in a big game, won’t concede there’s any discord, and shows supreme confidence the bills will pass, and soon.
“I think there is no split,” she said. “We’ve got to sort out where our differences are and it’s not overwhelming. People want to talk about a rift, a split, a divide. No, there are differences of opinion but amongst a very few members.”
As for the two bills, including her child tax credit and the paid family and medical leave that she coauthored, “They will be moved in tandem and they will be voted on. And both bills will pass.”
After Friday’s chaos in the House, Biden showed up on Capitol Hill to reassuree members the two bills will happen together — angering a small faction of Dems who want the first infrastructure bill immediately. But the real issue isn’t the squabbles, it’s that the Dems have such narrow margins in the Senate — 50-50, with the vice president breaking a tie — and the House, which is 220-212 for the Dems.
With Republicans not playing ball, that means every Democratic voice matters a lot. The Dems know the window is closing soon to make all this happen because they need to tax the rich to pay for it and they almost definitely won’t control both the U.S. House and Senate after 2022.
So now the game is to knock down that $3.5 trillion price tag behind closed doors, reach a deal and lock in the votes. DeLauro, as a power broker, and Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, as a former member of the leadership and senior member of another powerful committee, have a strong role to play.
“I’m talking to my colleagues, talking to the White House, talking to the leadership in the House,” DeLauro said. “I’m deeply involved in those efforts . ... What I can do is participate in the negotiations and have people understand that not everybody is going to get everything that they want, but that people are waiting for us to address the serious economic concerns that they have.”
What does that mean? When I asked whether she’d rather cut each proposed program across the board or eliminate some of the goodies in the basket altogether, she gave an answer I didn’t comprehend. But she did say she’s willing to see the income threshold for the child tax credits come down to a maximum of $150,000 for joint filers, from $200,000 or even higher.
She would not say whether she would accept a figure ranging from $1.9 trillion to $2.3 trillion, as some news reports have suggested. Bear in mind, the full tax credit alone is in the neighborhood
Larson, for his part, said, “You’re not going to negotiate a bill in the press.”
But Larson added that the delay in the first infrastructure vote caused headaches.
“Like everybody else, we’re frustrated because we have to come home and try to explain that, and people would say, ‘I thought you were in favor of infrastructure.’ I said, ‘I am.’ ‘Then how come then you guys didn’t pass the bill?’ Then you have to go back and try to explain that. So you’re spending more time explaining, and our erstwhile colleagues on the other side, who are far better at messaging than we are, just sit back and say, ‘You’re not getting it done.’”
That explains a lot about the process. It appears likely we will see a major reform coming out of this Congress, on the scale of Obamacare for children and maybe Medicare. How it all goes down could determine the power arrangements in Washington, D.C. for years to come.