House Democrats on Thursday appeared to clear one of the final hurdles to passing their $1.75 trillion social policy package, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated it would add $160 billion to the national deficit over the next 10 years.
The analysis paved the way for Democrats to pass the sprawling Build Back Better plan in the House Thursday night, sending it to the Senate and moving it one step closer to President Joe Biden’s desk.
Democratic leaders, progressives and most moderates rallied around the package they said would make historic investments in fighting climate change, lower prescription drug prices, expand Medicare coverage and provide universal pre-kindergarten.
“We will change the lives of Americans for generations to come,” House Ways and Means Chairman Richie Neal, D-Mass., said on the House floor.
“Those of us who serve on this date will be able to tell our children and grandchildren we were there when the Congress passed one of the most transformational bills in the history of the Congress,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said.
Republicans assailed Democrats over the scope and cost of the package — given President Joe Biden’s initial pledge that it would cost “zero dollars” — and predicted it would further fuel inflation ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
“Future generations will laugh at the spending you’re creating tonight,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said of Democrats’ “unnecessary spending binge.”
Speaking for over an hour on the House floor, he repeatedly likened Biden to former President Jimmy Carter, the one-term Democratic president who presided over inflation and rising gas prices in the late 1970s.
Republicans repeatedly said Democrats were overstating their mandate from the 2020 election — and argued that a Republican victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race earlier this month signaled unease with Democrats’ spending plans.
“Nobody elected Joe Biden to be FDR,” McCarthy said.
“I did!” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., shouted.
The tone of debate on the House floor Thursday was acrimonious, with tensions between Republicans and Democrats still running high after Democrats voted to censure Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., for posting a provocative cartoon video showing him killing Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Biden. McCarthy was heckled repeatedly by Democrats over the course of his speech, and lawmakers shouted at each other from across the chamber.
At least one Democrat, conservative Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, signaled opposition to the plan before the vote on final passage, taking issue with a provision to raise the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes that could benefit high-earning homeowners.
It’s one of several provisions that faces an uphill climb in the Senate, along with four weeks of paid family leave and provisions to shield some undocumented immigrants from deportation.
No Republicans are expected to support the package in either chamber.
The social spending bill contains $555 billion for climate and clean energy investments. It would reduce the cost of some prescription drugs, extend the child tax credit, expand universal preschool and includes electric-vehicle tax credits, paid leave, housing assistance and dozens more progressive priorities.
If the measure passes the House, the Senate is expected to amend the proposal in the coming weeks after the Thanksgiving recess as Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have not committed to the package in its current form.
Since Democrats plan to pass the measure through reconciliation, a lengthy budget process that would not require them to have any Republican support since Democrats have a narrow majority in both chambers, the legislation — months in the making — still has a long way to go, including back to the House, before it would even hit Biden’s desk.
Pelosi expressed confidence that with control of Congress hanging in the balance ahead of the midterm elections less than a year away, Democrats will be able to successfully sell their work to the American people — and do so more effectively than they did in 2010 after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, due, in part, to Biden using the “bully pulpit.”
“Joe Biden is very committed to messaging this. As you’ve seen he’s already on the road,” she said. “There’s no substitute for the bully pulpit of the president of the United States reinforced by the events we will have across the United States.”
Democratic members of Congress are also planning to hold 1,000 events before the end of the year to make clear to Americans “what we’re doing in this package,” according to the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, speaking to part one of Biden’s policy agenda on infrastructure signed into law on Monday.
“The messaging on it will be immediate, and it will be intense, and it will be eloquent, and it will make a difference,” Pelosi said.
Giving remarks in Woodstock, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, Biden also endorsed Pelosi’s timeline to pass part two of his infrastructure agenda this week.
“I’m confident that the House is going to pass this bill. And when it passes, it will go to the Senate,” Biden said. “I think we’ll get it passed within a week.”
McCarthy, in his quest to become the House speaker, blasted Pelosi at his press conference and said the reconciliation bill will “be the end of their Democratic majority.”
While the already-passed bipartisan infrastructure law itself and its individual components — rebuilding and repairing bridges, ports and roads, expanding broadband internet, and more — are widely popular, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Americans aren’t giving Biden credit for championing the law and getting it through Congress. The president’s approval rating is at an all-time low at 41%.
Democratic leaders and the White House continue to insist both pieces of legislation will be fully paid for, in part by imposing a 15% minimum tax on corporate profits that large corporations report to shareholders.
Pelosi on Thursday also tried to defend Democrats’ “Build Back Better” proposal from criticism over a key tax provision that has angered some in the caucus. Some moderates and leading progressives have criticized plans to undo a cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deductions — a reversal of Republicans’ 2017 tax law — popular in California, New York and New Jersey, given that the change would benefit wealthy suburban property owners.
The change would allow taxpayers to deduct up to $80,000 in state and local taxes from their federal tax returns after Republicans imposed a $10,000 cap on federal deductions four years ago.
A recent analysis from the Tax Policy Center found the SALT cap increase would primarily benefit the top 10% of income-earning Americans. About 70% of the tax benefit would go to the top 5% of earners, who make $366,000 a year or more, the analysis said.
“That’s not about tax cuts for wealthy people. It’s about services for the American people,” Pelosi said. “This isn’t about who gets a tax cut, it’s about which states get the revenue they need to help the American people.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at her briefing Thursday that the White House was “comfortable” with the SALT cap increase being included in the version of the “Build Back Better” bill on which the House is expected to vote — but she wouldn’t say the president’s excited it.
“It is a component that wasn’t initially proposed,” Psaki said. “This is a part of compromise. It’s not something that would add to the deficit…as it is included in the package, and certainly we’re comfortable with it moving forward.”
Pressed on that response, Psaki repeated the provision was the result of a compromise.
“This is a part of the bill that the president — that has been proposed, that is important to key members, as you all know,” Psaki said. “That’s why it’s in the package. The president’s excitement about this is not about the SALT deduction. It’s about the other key components of the package. And that’s why we’re continuing to press for it to move forward.”
ABC News’ Trish Turner and Mariam Khan contributed to this report.
