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As Democrats prepare to cast their final vote on President Biden’s economic agenda, some lawmakers in the party are preparing for the next fight: trying to persuade voters to let them finish what they started.
The bill expected to pass the House on Friday only cements some of Democrats’ long-delayed plans. It aims to fight climate change, lower health care costs, overhaul the tax code and reduce the deficit, after party leaders previously rejected more ambitious spending proposals in search of a deal that could win over moderates in their ranks
Political pledges have reported that Democrats have restructured their pitch to voters this week as they roll out across the country after a successful Senate vote. With control of Congress up for grabs in November’s midterm elections, the parties’ lawmakers have sought to strike a political balance, enthusiastically touting their early victories while signaling they are committed to making another run at the ideas they had to abandon
“The fact that we can show that we’re actually doing something, that people care, that doesn’t require a difficult explanation,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) said in a recent interview , describing the bill as “one of the most significant pieces of legislation passed in decades.”
But Schumer said her work isn’t done, especially if Democrats “pick up a few more seats” in the midterm elections. Just a few months ago, the majority leader had tried to move a broader package that aimed to expand Medicare, invest in affordable housing, improve child care, provide free daycare and offer a host of new benefits to low-income Americans. income That push ultimately failed after Sen. Joe Manchin III (DW.Va.) raised concerns about its price and the scope of the policy, though he and Schumer eventually reached a compromise.
“If we win, we’re going to have to do a reconciliation bill that deals with a lot of things that we couldn’t do,” Schumer said, referring to the legislative process that allows his party to nullify the Republican opposition.
Senate passes Inflation Reduction Act, nailing long-delayed health and climate bill
For Democrats, the Inflation Reduction Act is a major political achievement in its own right. The bill offers the biggest burst of federal spending ever to tackle global warming, for example with new programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost clean energy technologies, including electric vehicles
With it, Democrats also offered new initiatives to cap and reduce drug costs for seniors in Medicare and prevent about 13 million low- and middle-income Americans from seeing insurance premiums go up each year coming. Lawmakers paid for their package, while generating new money for deficit reduction, through proposals targeting billion-dollar corporations and tax traps.
Democrats hammered out the measure in the Senate, after months of tumultuous negotiations between Schumer and Manchin, the party’s main moderate holdout. Last month’s talks appeared on the verge of a total collapse, after Manchin became concerned about the spending proposed by Democrats as inflation threatened the economy.
But the duo continued to work, largely out of sight of members of their party, before agreeing a surprise summer deal. After another round of tweaks, this time to satisfy Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), another key moderate, Democrats guided the bill through a marathon overnight debate and adopt Sunday before the unanimous Republican opposition.
The two-week fight that saved the Democrats’ climate agenda
The success of the result has softened the bill for the House, where lawmakers must take the first procedural steps on Wednesday that pave the way for it to reach the floor on Friday. A final vote would send the bill to Biden’s desk, cementing a package more than a year in the making.
To prevail, Democrats must remain almost completely united: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) has just four votes to spare in the closely divided chamber. And they must withstand an intensification of gridlock tactics and political attacks from Republicans, who have argued that the bill would make families’ finances worse.
“This will mean higher taxes for working families and higher costs due to inflation,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House minority whip.
In the coming weeks, Scalise said, Republicans “will propose a [economic] agenda that will reverse it”, referring to the Inflation Reduction Law. But for now, he said, GOP lawmakers intend to focus on “letting the country know every dirty, rotten part of this bill.”
Even before the House debate began, many Democrats in the chamber had begun touting the bill’s benefits to voters. For some in the party, the electoral map is difficult amid conflicting economic indicators and mixed opinion polls about their majority and Biden’s popularity. But Schumer in recent days has presented the package as a set of “things that Americans long for and couldn’t get done,” which contrasts with Republicans, who voted against it.
In Virginia, for example, Rep. Abigail Spanberger touted a new program that would cap seniors’ annual drug costs and allow Medicare to negotiate the price of some drugs.
Those provisions wouldn’t take effect for some time, and Medicare negotiations in particular don’t begin until 2026. But Spanberger, a member of the moderate Blue Dog coalition running in a competitive race, said passage of the bill law would help him “look at retirement and say we’re limiting his out-of-pocket costs,” even if the benefits aren’t immediate.
“I think [it] understandably not fast,” he said.
Sanders grapples with the lost opportunity in the Democrats’ economic plan
The expected House vote comes about nine months after Manchin’s opposition scuttled the roughly $2 trillion Better Reconstruction Act that Democrats passed in November. When the bill faltered last year, some lawmakers were nervous and furious, fearing they had squandered a rare opportunity to push their agenda.
But their mood has changed considerably in recent days as party leaders implore them to savor their current success and start looking to the future.
“As I say to members, you can’t judge a bill by what it doesn’t do,” Pelosi said Tuesday on MSNBC. “You respect him for what he does. And what this bill does is remarkable.”
“Do we want more? Of course,” he added. “Will we continue to work for more? Of course.”
Speaking from her home state of Washington, Rep. Pramila Jayapal said she had already begun touting some climate change provisions to local voters, stressing that the spending could cut emissions by 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Jayapal had been a major force in crafting the original Build Back Better Act on behalf of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a powerful bloc of nearly 100 left-leaning lawmakers. The group had repeatedly pushed Manchin to push a larger bill, sometimes criticizing him for obstructing the will of his own party’s majority.
But Jayapal said liberals are willing to support the new bill because it allows Democrats to get some of what they hoped for and positions them to try again if they retain their majorities.
“We made the case to the country about the need for universal child care, universal pre-K, investments in housing, expanding Medicare,” he said. “All we need to do is get a couple more Democrats in the Senate and ideally expand our majority in the House and we can do the other pieces.”
“We could really pass a reconciliation bill that has everything else in the first few months of getting an expanded majority in the Senate,” he said. “That’s the pitch we’re making to the voters, that I’m making to the voters.”
Reflecting on his own work, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the leader of the tax-focused Finance Committee, said his panel had achieved the kind of meaningful policy changes he has pursued for years. Along with the drug price, Wyden and his aides crafted proposals to fund the bill, reduce the deficit and help provide for climate-related spending.
This week, Wyden hit the road to promote the package in Oregon. The senator, who appeared at events in Wilsonville and Portland on Tuesday with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, said he spoke to voters about the “transformational” spending Democrats passed on climate and health.
But Wyden and Democratic leaders failed to get everything they hoped for, including a more sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code that could have raised rates for wealthy individuals and corporations. The push, which aimed to roll back tax cuts implemented under President Donald Trump in 2017, failed along with a slew of other proposals as a result of Sinema’s opposition.
Wyden acknowledged the omission, and other cuts in areas such as child care, as a reflection of “how challenging a 50-50 Senate is.” Even so, the senator emphasized in an interview: “There is a lot to do; I’m not downplaying it. But when you thread the needle on big issues, it’s something to build on.”
Faced with these changes, one lawmaker, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), worked to expand the Inflation Reduction Act in the final hours of the debate. Targeting prescription drugs, climate change and a long-sought push to expand tax credits for parents with children, Sanders offered a series of amendments that would have restored some of the cut provisions. to win Manchin’s support.
But Sanders failed repeatedly, stymied by opposition from Republicans and even Democrats who felt they had to protect their delicate deal at all costs. The series of votes, in which Sanders found himself as the only vote in the chamber, often came after his fellow Democrats promised…