That the Senate was able to pass the bill is somewhat of a surprise if you look back to December 2021, when Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) appeared to torpedo efforts with an announcement on Fox News that he could not support the measure because of inflation.
It was just 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 biggest part of Washington and the nation. .
The package now moves to the House, where it is expected to pass despite opposition from Republicans and frustration from Democrats over its size.
Here are five takeaways.
Senate Democrats stayed together
The Senate was in session Saturday, beginning a 11:30 p.m. Saturday vote that continued into Sunday, in which Democrats blocked GOP amendment after GOP amendment.
Republicans had a few goals with their amendment strategy.
One was to force Democrats into tough votes ahead of 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 his support in the House and force the entire operation 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 stick together to deal with them.
That changed after 2 a.m. Sunday, when Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and six other Democrats sponsored a measure that raised revenue by extending for one year the cap on state and local tax credits (SALT) that was a key feature of 2017 Trump’s Tax Cut Bill.
Democrats initially worried that passage of this amendment could hurt the bill, but after it passed they proposed another amendment that replaced the SALT cap extension with a different tax provision.
It was somewhat predictable that Democrats stuck together since it was a necessity for final passage, but it was still remarkable 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 offered hugs to Sinema. The relief on members’ faces as they said goodbye before the August break was clear.
Sanders, Dems and both showed some frustration
It wasn’t all love and roses for Democrats during the marathon night of votes.
While the bigger story was Democrats fighting the GOP amendments, Democrats also blocked several amendments from one of their own caucuses: Sanders, the two-time presidential candidate.
In one of the night’s most heated moments on the floor, Sanders proposed an amendment to revive the expanded child tax credit, which expired at the end of last year, as part of the Democrats’ sweeping package.
“The United States has the highest rate of child poverty of almost any major country on Earth, and it is particularly high among young people of color,” Sanders said. “This is the richest nation on Earth, we shouldn’t have the highest rate of child poverty of almost any country.”
The Sanders measure would have restored an expanded credit of $300 over four years and would have been paid for by raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%.
Democrats argued that while much of the party agreed with the Sanders proposal, adding it would have sunk the entire package.
“Japanese minute. Sanders is right, the child tax credit is one of the most important things this House has done. It reduced the child poverty rate by 40 percent almost immediately,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). , who nevertheless urged colleagues not to vote in favor of the amendment to avoid “throwing up the bill”.
As the debate continued and Sanders pushed back on Brown, asking what harm would be done if at least those Democrats opposed to the tax credit were forced to kill it while the rest of the caucus — 48 senators in all — voted for it, Brown could be he heard her say “come on, Bernie.”
In the end, Democrats stood together — with Republicans but without Sanders — voting against the amendment 1-99.
A senator has a lot of power in the 50-50 Senate
Once the package envisioned by House and Senate Democrats would have included the child tax credit and more.
The package under consideration last fall would exceed $3 trillion, representing one of the most ambitious legislative plans in US history.
What ended up passing is much smaller — largely because of Manchin and Sinema, who both opposed various parts of the original plan.
The result reflected the essential truth that Democrats couldn’t do much without Manchin and Sinema, since no Republicans were going to join them in their legislation. This meant that they needed complete unity in their ranks in the Senate to achieve anything.
It eliminated the “carried interest loophole,” a Sinema windfall intended to raise taxes on hedge fund managers.
The language came to boost oil and gas drilling in a package that is intended overall to move the US away from dependence on fossil fuels. That was a concession to Manchin, who also reduced the size of the bill largely because he said he did not want to add to inflation.
Democrats had to essentially buy off Manchin and then Sinema to get the bill through the Senate, and both used their leverage to get much of what they wanted.
It’s another lesson in basic Senate politics. If your vote is needed, you can get paid in state and interest forecasts, which both Manchin and Cinema got in spades.
Cinema flexed its political muscle early in the negotiations when it blocked proposals to raise corporate tax from 21 percent to 25 percent and raise the top marginal income tax rate for the wealthy.
Democratic colleagues were surprised by her hard line, as they assumed that tax breaks from corporations and top income taxes would be the core of any fiscal deal package.
Some other Democrats also tried to use their leverage by 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-backed immigration amendments, and some Western Democrats warned they might vote “no” if a drought relief provision that Sinema was asking to punish them. States of origin.
Democrats are hoping for some help in the interim
The Democratic Party’s base has been in a tailspin for months — in part because of a sense that its political leaders were getting nothing done in Washington.
This sentiment was always subjective and partly linked to the expectations of party members.
In his first year in office, Biden saw Democratic majorities pass a massive coronavirus relief package months into office and later a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that will make major investments in roads and bridges across the country.
But because the Build Back Better agenda had been blocked — and because a large number of Democrats identified it as their true top priority — there was a sense that the party had accomplished almost nothing.
That sentiment contributed to Biden’s negative poll numbers that were already down due to frustration over inflation and high gas prices.
The expectation for much of 2021 was that Democrats wouldn’t do much of Build Back Better. Instead, they’re on the verge of surpassing a chunk of $740 billion.
The party hopes it will make the base feel a little more strongly about going to the polls to support Democratic candidates for the House and Senate in November.
Schumer showed his ability as a leader
Schumer faced many questions about his ability to lead a slim 50-50 majority in the Senate when he took control of the upper chamber in January of last year.
Progressives have pressed him from the start to consider ditching the Senate filibuster to pass 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 legislation and tax reform looked bleak after Schumer and Manchin sparred in a July 14 meeting, but Manchin returned to the leader a few days later trying to rekindle a deal.
Schumer called the resulting compromise “one of the most comprehensive and important pieces of legislation Congress has seen in decades.”
Manchin’s deal with 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 a lower drug price 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.
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And Schumer prevented Sanders, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, from defecting, despite his loud grumblings that the bill falls far short of what the American public needs to better pay for health care, child care and housing.
Democrats voted en masse to defeat several attempts by Sanders to change the bill after Sumer…
