Source: AUN News

In Washington, With a test vote that paved the way for the passage of a significant portion of President Biden’s domestic plan in the coming days, a divided Senate took an essential step on Saturday toward approving Democrats’ plan to combat climate change, lower health care costs, and raise taxes on large corporations.

On a party-line vote of 51 to 50, the bill passed with all Republicans voting against it. Vice President Kamala Harris broke the tie.

The action suggested that Democrats had finally come together behind legislation that would allocate hundreds of billions of dollars for climate and energy programs, extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, and establish a new federal initiative to lower the cost of prescription drugs, particularly for older Americans, after more than a year of internal fighting and laborious negotiating.

A large portion of the 755-page bill would be funded by tax increases, which Democrats claim are necessary to make the tax system more egalitarian.

The Senate could approve the bill as soon as Sunday, thanks to the vote, and the House is anticipated to concur by the end of the week. That would give Mr. Biden a massive lift when his popularity is declining and would give Democrats victory heading into the midterm elections in November, which will determine whether or not they maintain their legislative majorities.

According to Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer of New York, “the plan, when passed, will accomplish all of our goals: tackling climate change, bringing down healthcare costs, closing tax loopholes misused by the wealthiest, and cutting the deficit.” As the Republican Party aggressively opposes provisions that reduce costs for the American family, this is a significant victory for the American people.

Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, two significant Democratic holdouts, were crucial players in the hard-won accord, which contains the essential investment in history to combat global change.

A few weeks prior, Mr. Manchin, a Democrat with a pro-conservative slant from a red state, had declared he could not agree to include climate, energy, and tax measures in the domestic policy package this summer due to his worries that doing so would worsen inflation. But late last month, he and Mr. Schumer surprised members from both parties by announcing that they had secretly returned to the negotiation table and reached an agreement that contained those demands.

After gaining concessions, including removing a clause that would have restricted a tax advantage that allows private equity executives and hedge fund managers to pay significantly lower taxes on some income than other taxpayers, Ms. Sinema indicated on Thursday that she, too, would press on.

Republicans continue to oppose the proposal vehemently and have worked frantically to stop it because they are enraged by the revival of a scheme they believed to be dead. They have rushed to blast the package as a big-spending, tax-hiking atrocity that would worsen inflation and harm the economy perilously after being caught off guard by Mr. Schumer’s and Mr. Manchin’s agreement.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said: “Democrats are mistaking the American people’s fury as a mandate for yet another — yet another — reckless taxing and spending spree.”

He criticized the prescription medication proposal, calling it a “tidal wave of Washington intervention” that would “put a buzz saw to the research and development behind innovative, lifesaving medical treatments and cures.”

But Democrats have changed the name of the groundbreaking “Build Back Better” climate and social safety net package to the “Inflation Reduction Act.” Democrats have abandoned billions of dollars in proposed spending on domestic programs and many of the tax increases they had offered to pay for it because they were operating with a razor-thin Senate majority that gave their most conservative members strong influence over the measure.

It has been predicted that the policy will eliminate the federal budget deficit by the end of the decade without requiring a significant increase in federal spending or the imposition of substantial tax increases on those who are not giant enterprises.

Republicans continued to claim that it would be bad for the economy and Americans despite this. Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn referred to it as the “Manchin-Schumer Tax Hike of 2022.”

Republicans tried to slow down or stop the legislation for a significant portion of the past week by claiming it broke the reconciliation rules. (They did, however, privately say that they wouldn’t make the Senate clerks read the measure out loud, as a similar move last year sparked a commotion.)

The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, and her team worked until the wee hours of Saturday morning to evaluate if the bill’s provisions broke the rules, which demand that each measure directly impact federal expenditure or revenue. She told Democrats early on Saturday to limit the scope of an action meant to prevent prescription price increases from surpassing inflation. She stated that a proposed rebate could only apply to medications bought by Medicare, not commercial insurers.

However, after Ms. MacDonough’s review, top Democrats declared that most of the legislation was still in place. This included a proposal to allow Medicare to directly negotiate the price of prescription drugs, limitations on new electric vehicle tax breaks, and a fee intended to reduce excessive methane emissions. This greenhouse gas is frequently released from oil and gas leaks.

Republicans were scheduled to start pushing a rapid-fire series of votes on politically poisonous amendments as early as Saturday night in a last-ditch attempt to kill the proposal. This ritual, known as a vote-a-Rama, lasts for hours and is necessary for reconciliation bills to pass. To thwart any revisions by Republicans and secure ultimate passage, the Democratic caucus will need the support of all 50 senators in the evenly divided Senate.

“What kind of vote-a-Rama will it be? Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, promised it would be “like hell.” He said of Democrats, “They deserve this.”

Democrats might still alter the legislation. They are anticipated to dare Republicans to remove a popular idea that would cap the price of insulin for all patients but would break the budget rules because it would not have an immediate impact on federal expenditure.

And at least one Democratic caucus member, Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and the head of the Senate Budget Committee, has declared his intention to demand votes on improvements to the bill.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Sanders said, “This is a very insufficient bill, but it does, to some extent, begin to confront the existential peril facing the world.” “I’m dissatisfied,”

To protect the tenuous consensus surrounding the bill and ensure that it might become law, most Democrats, however, were attempting to persuade their colleagues to remain united against any amendments — including those that members could make of their caucus.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told reporters, “What I care about is that we get to 50 votes, OK, in the end, and that means we have got to keep this package together.” “What counts is that we have reached an agreement, and we must maintain that agreement.”

Analysis by: Advocacy Unified Network