Senate Democrats, after a very long series of votes, approved a massive $740 billion bill that would make significant investments in climate change while lowering the cost of prescription drugs and taking steps toward a fairer tax code.
That the Senate passed the bill is somewhat of a surprise when you look back to December 2021, when Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) appeared to torpedo the effort with an announcement on Fox News that he could not support the measure because inflation.
It was the first time Manchin appeared to kill the bill, only to save it with a last-minute deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) late last month that surprised the majority part of Washington and the nation.
The package now moves to the House, where it is expected to pass despite opposition from Republicans and some frustration from Democrats over its size.
Here are five takeaways.
Senate Democrats stayed together
The Senate was in session Saturday, beginning a vote at 11:30 p.m. Saturday that continued into Sunday, with Democrats blocking GOP amendment after GOP amendment.
Republicans had several goals with their amendment strategy.
One was to force Democrats to take tough votes before the midterm elections on gas prices, taxes, immigration and other issues.
Another goal was to add a “poison pill” amendment to the package that could weaken its support in the House and force the entire enterprise to collapse.
None of those amendments were added to the package — at least for the first 14 or 15 hours of the marathon — because Democrats were able to hold together to fight them.
That changed after 2 p.m. Sunday, when Sen. Kirsten Sinema (Ariz.) and six other Democrats supported a measure that would raise revenue by extending for one year the cap on state and local tax deductions (SALT), which was a key feature of 2017 Trump’s tax cut bill.
Democrats initially worried that passing this amendment might hurt the bill, but after it passed, they offered another amendment that replaced the SALT cap expansion with a different tax provision.
It was somewhat predictable that Democrats stuck together as a necessity for final passage, but it was still notable given the stark differences between centrists like Manchin and Sinema and progressive voices like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
During the final vote, several Democrats embraced Sinema. The relief on members’ faces as they said goodbye before the August break was clear.
Both Sanders and the two Democrats showed some frustration
It wasn’t all love and roses for Democrats during the marathon night of votes.
While the bigger story was that Democrats were fighting the GOP amendments, Democrats also rejected multiple amendments from one of their own caucuses: Sanders, the two-time presidential candidate.
In one of the chamber’s most heated moments of the night, Sanders offered an amendment to revive the expanded child tax credit, which expired at the end of last year, as part of a sweeping Democratic package.
“Unfortunately, the United States has the highest child poverty rate of almost any major country on Earth, and it is particularly high among people of color,” Sanders said. “This is the richest nation on Earth, we shouldn’t have the highest child poverty rate of almost any country.”
Sanders’ measure would restore the expanded $300 credit over four years and be paid for by raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent.
Democrats say that while much of the party agrees with Sanders’ proposal, if added, it would sink the entire package.
“Sen. Sanders is right, the child tax credit is one of the most important things this body has done. It reduced the child poverty rate by 40 percent almost immediately,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who nevertheless urged his colleagues not to vote on the amendment to avoid reducing the bill.
As the debate continued and Sanders pushed back on Brown, asking what harm it would do to at least force those Democrats who oppose the tax credit to eliminate it while the rest of the caucus — 48 senators in all — voted for it, Brown could be heard to say “come on Bernie”.
In the end, Democrats stood together — with Republicans but without Sanders — voting against the 1-99 amendment.
One senator has a lot of power in a 50-50 Senate
At one time, the package envisioned by House and Senate Democrats would have included the child tax credit and much more.
The package under consideration last fall would have topped $3 trillion, representing one of the most ambitious legislative plans in US history.
What ultimately passed was much less — mostly because of Manchin and Sinema, who both opposed various parts of the original plan.
The result reflects the basic truth that Democrats can do almost nothing without Manchin and Sinema, because no Republican would join them on their legislation. This meant that they needed complete unity within their ranks in the Senate to achieve anything.
Gone is the elimination of the “carried interest loophole,” a victim of Sinema, which aimed to raise taxes on hedge fund managers.
In short, to support oil and gas drilling in a package that is generally intended to wean the US away from fossil fuel dependence. It was a concession to Manchin, who also reduced the size of the bill largely because he said he didn’t want it to add to inflation.
Democrats essentially had to buy off Manchin and then Sinema to get the bill through the Senate, and both used their leverage to get a lot of what they wanted.
This is another lesson in basic Senate politics. If your vote is needed, you can get paid in provisions for your state and interest, something that both Manchin and Sinema got in spades.
Sinema showed political muscle early in the talks when he rejected proposals to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 25 percent and raise the top marginal tax rate on the incomes of the wealthy.
Colleagues in the Democratic Party were surprised by her hard line, as they assumed that corporate and top income tax cuts would be at the heart of any budget reconciliation package.
Some other Democrats also tried to use their influence, threatening to derail the package if it included language that would be unpalatable to their constituents.
Sen. Bob Menendez (DN.J.) said he would vote against the final reconciliation bill if it included any Republican-sponsored immigration amendments, and some Western Democrats warned they might vote no if the drought relief provision , requested by Sinema, punish their home countries.
Democrats are hoping for some help in the midterms
The Democratic base has been in the dumps for months — in part because of the perception that its political leaders aren’t getting much done in Washington.
This feeling has always been subjective and partly related to the expectations of party members.
In his first year in office, Biden saw Democratic majorities approve a massive coronavirus relief package months into his term, and later a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that would make major investments in roads and bridges in the whole country.
But because the Build Back Better agenda was blocked — and because a significant number of Democrats made it their true top priority — it felt like the party accomplished next to nothing.
That sentiment contributed to Biden’s negative results in the polls, which had already declined due to frustration with inflation and high gas prices.
The expectation for much of 2021 was that Democrats would not do much of Build Back Better. Instead, they are on the verge of passing a $740 billion portion of it.
The party hopes it will make the base feel a little stronger about going to the polls to support Democratic House and Senate candidates in November.
Schumer showed his courage as a leader
Schumer faced many questions about his ability to lead a razor-thin 50-50 majority in the Senate when he took control of the upper chamber last January.
Progressives have pressed him from the start to consider rejecting the Senate filibuster in favor of big, bold proposals like election reform despite a slim Democratic majority.
Democratic senators said that if they failed to pass legislation to address climate change, the session would be something of a letdown.
The outlook for climate change and tax reform legislation looked bleak after Schumer and Manchin blew up in a July 14 meeting, but Manchin returned to the leader a few days later, looking to renew the deal.
Schumer called the resulting compromise “one of the most comprehensive and impactful bills Congress has seen in decades.”
Getting Manchin to agree to the most sweeping climate bill ever passed by Congress, despite strong opposition from the West Virginia Coal Association, will go down in the books as an impressive example of leadership and deal-making.
Getting Sinema to agree to give Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices is another impressive achievement. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) hailed it as a “seismic shift” in power between the government and the pharmaceutical industry.
The Hill’s Morning Report — Biden hails big win for Democrats in Senate; Next House DeSantis is a ‘more formidable’ opponent than Trump, Democrats say
And Schumer kept Sanders, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, from running, despite his loud grumblings that the bill falls far short of what the American public needs to better afford health care, child care and …
Add Comment