The Democrat leadership abruptly postponed an expected House vote on a 10-year, $1.85 trillion social and environment measure on Friday. The postponement comes as leaders are still struggling to balance demands from progressives and moderates to get President Joe Biden‘s domestic agenda through Congress.
The Democrat leadership is still trying to push an accompanying $1 trillion infrastructure plan through the chamber and to his desk in order to give the President a desperately needed win.
The lawmakers are set to leave Washington DC for a weeklong break. The Democratic Party has been trying for weeks to find middle ground on its massive package of health, education, family, and climate change initiatives but so far has hit a deadlock between the progressives and the centrists. Democrat unity is important because of the Party’s slender majority in both chambers of Congress. They need the support of every Senate Democrat and can have no more than three defectors in the House of Representatives.
The party’s congressional leaders had hoped for House approval of both that measure and the infrastructure bill on Friday. That would have produced twin triumphs for a president and party eager to rebound from this week’s deflating off-year elections and show they can govern.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leaders met privately with a handful of centrists who say they want an official cost estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Leaders want to pass that legislation, and a separate five-year, $1 trillion package of road and other infrastructure projects, to quickly notch accomplishments just days after a gubernatorial election defeat in Virginia and disappointing contests elsewhere.
House passage of Biden’s larger measure would send it to the Senate, where it would face certain changes and more Democratic drama. That’s chiefly because of demands by Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to contain the measure’s costs and curb or drop some of its initiatives.
But House approval of the smaller, bipartisan infrastructure measure would send it directly to the White House, where Biden would be certain to take a victory lap. That bill, projected to create mountains of jobs, had been blocked by House progressives to pressure moderates to back the larger family and climate change legislation.
Alongside the slimmer roads-bridges-and-broadband package, it adds up to Biden’s answer to his campaign promise to rebuild the country from the COVID-19 crisis and confront a changing economy.
Half the size of Biden’s initial $3.5 trillion package, the bill exceeds 2,100 pages and has the support of progressive lawmakers, even though it is smaller than they wanted. But the chamber’s more centrist and fiscally conservative Democrats continued to mount objections.
Republicans opposed the measure as too expensive and damaging to the economy.
Overall the package remains more far-reaching than any other in decades. It would provide large numbers of Americans with assistance to pay for health care, raising children, and caring for elderly people at home.
There would be lower prescription drug costs, limiting the price of insulin to $35 a dose. Medicare for the first time would be able to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices for some other drugs, a long-sought Democratic priority.
Medicare would have a new hearing aid benefit for older Americans, and those with Medicare Part D would see their out-of-pocket prescription drug costs capped at $2,000.
The package would provide some $555 billion in tax breaks encouraging cleaner energy and electric vehicles, the nation’s largest commitment to tackling climate change.
With a flurry of late adjustments, the Democrats added key provisions in recent days — adding back a new paid family leave program and work permits for immigrants. Late changes on Thursday raised a $10,000 cap on state-and-local tax deductions to $80,000.
Much of the package’s cost would be covered with higher taxes on wealthier Americans, those earning more than $400,000 a year, and a 5% surtax would be added on those making over $10 million annually. Large corporations would face a new 15% minimum tax in an effort to stop big businesses from claiming so many deductions that they end up paying zero in taxes.
Manchin has panned the new family and medical leave program, which is expected to provide four weeks of paid time off after childbirth, for recovery from a major illness, or for caring for family members, less than the 12-week program once envisioned.
Senators are also likely to strip out a just-added immigration provision that would create a new program for some 7 million immigrants who are in the country without legal standing, allowing them to apply for permits to work and travel in the U.S. for five years. It’s not clear that addition would pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian under special budget rules being used to process the package.
(With AP inputs)