House Narrowly Passes Biden’s Social Safety Net and Climate Bill

The vote was months in the making for the roughly $2 trillion measure, one of the most consequential bills in decades. Now it faces a difficult path in the Senate.WASHINGTON — The House on Friday narrowly passed the centerpiece of President Biden’s domestic agenda, approving $2 trillion in spending over the next decade to battle climate change, expand health care and reweave the nation’s social safety net, over the unanimous opposition of Republicans.The bill’s passage, 220 to 213, came after weeks of cajoling, arm-twisting and legislative legerdemain by Democrats. It was capped off by an exhausting, circuitous and record-breaking speech of more than eight hours by the House Republican leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, that pushed a planned Thursday vote past midnight, then delayed it to Friday morning — but did nothing to dent Democratic unity.Groggy lawmakers reassembled at 8 a.m., three hours after Mr. McCarthy finally abandoned the floor, to begin the final series of votes to send one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in half a century to the Senate.Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened the final push with what she called “a courtesy to” her colleagues: “I will be brief.” She then put the House’s actions in lofty terms.“Under this dome, for centuries, members of Congress have stood exactly where we stand to pass legislation of extraordinary consequence in our nation’s history and for our nation’s future,” she said, adding, the act “will be the pillar of health and financial security in America.”The bill still has a long and difficult road ahead. Democratic leaders must coax it through the 50-50 Senate and navigate a tortuous budget process that is almost certain to reshape the measure and force it back to the House — if it passes at all.But even pared back from the $3.5 trillion plan that Mr. Biden originally sought, the legislation could prove as transformative as any since the Great Society and War on Poverty in the 1960s, especially for young families and older Americans. The Congressional Budget Office published an official cost estimate on Thursday afternoon that found the package would increase the federal budget deficit by $160 billion over 10 years.Representative Kevin McCarthy pushed a planned Thursday vote past midnight.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesThe assessment indicated that the package overall would cost slightly more than Mr. Biden’s latest proposal — $2.1 trillion rather than $1.85 trillion. It offers universal prekindergarten, generous subsidies for child care that extend well into the middle class, expanded financial aid for college, hundreds of billions of dollars in housing support, home and community care for older Americans, a new hearing benefit for Medicare and price controls for prescription drugs.More than half a trillion dollars would go toward shifting the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels to renewable energy and electric cars, the largest investment ever to slow the warming of the planet. The package would largely be paid for with tax increases on high earners and corporations, estimated to bring in nearly $1.5 trillion over 10 years.Savings in government spending on prescription drugs were projected to bring in another $260 billion, though a scaled-back measure to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for some medications was estimated to save only $79 billion, far less than the Democrats’ original $456 billion proposal would have.“This bill will be transformational, and it will be measured in the deeper sense of hope that Americans will have when they see their economy working for them instead of holding them back,” Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader, said Thursday during what was supposed to the closing debate.The fact that the bill could slightly add to the federal deficit did not dissuade House Democrats from proceeding to vote for it, in part because the analysis boiled down to a dispute over a single line item: how much the I.R.S. would collect by cracking down on people and companies that dodge large tax bills.The budget office predicted that beefing up the I.R.S. with an additional $80 billion of funding would bring in just $127 billion over 10 years on net. That is far less than the $400 billion the White House estimates it would bring in over a decade, both through enforcement actions and by essentially scaring tax cheats into paying what they owe.The legislation is moving through Congress under special rules known as reconciliation that shield it from a filibuster, allowing Democrats to push it through over unified Republican opposition in the Senate.Even pared back from the $3.5 trillion plan President Biden originally sought, the House measure could prove as transformative as any legislative effort since the 1960s.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIt is a key piece of Mr. Biden’s domestic policy agenda, paired with a $1 trillion infrastructure package that the president signed into law this week. Its path to Friday’s vote was arduous, from midsummer to deep autumn, with negotiations pitting liberal lawmakers against centrists and House Democrats against senators.Democrats in the Senate and House had hoped to reach agreement on a final bill before either chamber voted, but that plan was ditched weeks ago amid persistent infighting.And from the beginning, Republicans — who made it clear they could never support a package of the scope and ambition Mr. Biden had proposed — were cut out of the reconciliation talks. While some Republicans voted for the infrastructure measure, they unanimously opposed the expansive social safety net package, arguing that it would constitute a “socialist” encroachment of the federal government into every aspect of American life, and would exacerbate rising costs across the country.Mr. McCarthy, the minority leader, took advantage of the House’s so-called “magic minute” — a custom that allows leaders to speak without time constraints when they are granted their minute of floor time.He held the floor well into Friday morning, railing for more than eight hours against the bill and the Biden administration, breaking the record for the longest consecutive House speech set by Ms. Pelosi in 2018 before he concluded at 5:10 a.m. Some Democrats pointedly walked out before he began to speak, and at times interrupted his speech against the bill with boos, heckles and jeers.“Every page of all this new Washington spending shows just how irresponsible and out of touch the Democrats are to the challenges that America faces today,” Mr. McCarthy said during his diatribe, which appeared designed more to rally his Republican base behind a message for the midterm elections in a debate that had been scheduled to last just 20 minutes.But just hours later, Democrats filed into the chamber, joking about the lack of sleep. And if Democrats feared the political consequences, it was not evident from the final tally, which reflected support among those from the most competitive districts.The only Democrat who opposed the bill, Representative Jared Golden of Maine, did so after raising concerns this month about the inclusion of a provision that would generously increase the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes paid, from $10,000 a year to $80,000. Understand the U.S. Debt CeilingCard 1 of 6What is the debt ceiling?

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