Good morning, everybody! My name is Grace Segers, and Iâm a (relatively) new staff writer at The New Republic. You can usually find me wandering around the bowels of the U.S. Capitol building, trying to catch lawmakers for quotes while perennially under-caffeinated.
So whatâs happening today? President Joe Biden is holding Democratsâ feet to the fire, pressing for them to finalize whatâs in their massive reconciliation bill as soon as possible. In Bidenâs ideal world, he would get the one-two punch of the House passing both the bipartisan infrastructure bill (BIB, if you will) and the reconciliation bill by next week. This would allow Biden to travel to Glasgow for the COP26 meeting with some domestic victories under his belt, and would provide Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe with a needed boost in an unexpectedly tight race.
Biden acknowledged some of the complicated political dynamics in a CNN town hall on Thursday. With only 50 Democrats in the Senate, Biden said, âeveryone is a president.â Thatâs especially true for Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, whom Biden called âa friendâ and âsmart as the devil,â respectively. The two are largely responsible for the price of the reconciliation bill being pulled down from around $3.5 trillion to closer to $1.5 trillion, likely ending up near the $2 trillion mark.
Itâs uncertain what will end up in the final package, although The Washington Post has a good rundown of what it might look like. The bill will likely include a host of programs extended for a short period of time, such as the expanded child tax credit, which may be extended for only one year but could have permanent full refundability. (If you want to know more about the CTC, read my piece on it from last month here.) Clean energy tax credits are likely in, but Manchin has expressed opposition to the Clean Energy Performance Programs, which are intended to create incentives and penalties for utility companies to encourage the transition to clean energy.
Other programs that seem likely to make it in: some form of universal pre-K, funding for child care, and some expansion for Medicare. Manchin has opposed Medicare expansion to include vision, dental, and hearing coverage, a priority for Senator Bernie Sanders. Biden said Thursday that achieving all three would be a âreach,â and suggested that Democrats could cut a deal to include an $800 voucher for dental care for the elderly, as well as allow consumers to buy over-the-counter hearing aids. He said there was âno consensusâ on vision care, and did not mention closing the Medicaid coverage gap. Proposals on affordable housing, elder care, and paid family leave will also likely be pared back; Biden said that leave was now down to four weeks instead of 12 weeks, âbecause I canât get 12 weeks.â
Finally, on how this will all be paid for: Democrats proposed raising tax rates on corporations and individuals, but this faces resistance from Sinema. Some alternatives are to implement a new minimum tax rate on corporations, strengthen tax enforcement through the IRS, and tax billionairesâ unrealized capital gainsâa proposal that faces skepticism from other moderate Democrats, The Wall Street Journal reports. Allowing Medicaid to negotiate drug prices is also teetering off the table, due to opposition from a few Democratic senators.
Democrats had hoped to reach a deal on the âframeworkâ of the reconciliation bill by the end of the week, but here we are on Friday with no deal in sight. Despite Bidenâs hopes for a quick resolution, Manchin told reporters Thursday that a finalized bill âis not going to happen anytime soon.â So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the minutiae of congressional negotiations.
At NewRepublic.com, Walter Shapiro argues that pundits have a terrible track record for predicting the outcome of the midterms. Arthur Wilmarth looks into attacks on Saule Omarova, Bidenâs nominee to be the primary regulator of big banks. Jo Livingstone investigates whether a podcast on Donna Tarttâs college days went too far, and Timothy Noah questions whether Democrats are losing their nerve on taxes. Plus, I wrote about how efforts to pass voting rights legislation in the Senate are doomed to fail unless the filibuster is eliminated or somehow reformed.
Warmest regards, Grace Segers, staff writer
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