Democrats introduce a $3.5 trillion budget to fund Biden’s Agenda
Late Tuesday night Democrats introduced a budget worth $3.5 Trillion to fund President Biden’s Agenda.
This proposal will cover several policies that Democrats weren’t able to get into their bipartisan infrastructure package, and would be voted on using the “reconciliation process” a process in Senate rules that avoids the need of a filibuster proof majority, and allows the Senate to pass legislation with just a 51 vote majority, or in the more likely case, a 50 vote plus Vice President Harris majority.
The new budget would include an ambitious set of policies that were initially rejected from President Biden’s initial infrastructure plan, and a series of proposals that were on the wishlists of progressive Democrats like Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT). Some of the policies include allocating more funding for programs like Medicare to expand into vision, dental and hearing coverage, and includes more money for climate change, universal pre-K, and other policies.
The plan is also expected to include new tax increase on richer Americans and corporations. However it is expected that the plan will include provisions that bar raising taxes on Americans making less than $400,000 a year and small businesses, two groups that President Biden had promised not to increase taxes on, for spending on the bill at least.
While the plan overall is quite ambitious and checks a lot of boxes for President Biden’s agenda, the bigger challenge is going to be passing the bill in the evenly divided senate.
Despite using the “reconciliation process” Democrats have a razor thin majority in the senate, and passing the bill with all 50 Democrats on board is very likely going to be a logistical challenge for Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and President Biden.
On one hand, the bill needs to satisfy the wishes of the more moderate wing of the Democratic party, appealing to people like Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), two Democrats who have a record of voting with their Republican colleagues more than their own caucus. Senator Joe Manchin commented “Everything should be payed for,” “How much can y’all handle?”
The plan will also need to appeal to major progressives like Senators Berine Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) some of whom had initially threatened to vote against any infrastructure package without reconciliation. So far there has been a lot of positive feedback from progressives, “The legislation that the president and I are supporting will go further to improve the lives of working people than any legislation since the 1930s,” Sanders commented, who is also the chairman of the very powerful budget committee.
With so much the positive feedback from most Democrats, there has also been an equivalent “unified” GOP opposition to the plan as said by the New York Times. On the budget proposal, Senate minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said “Just this morning we learned that runaway inflation is continuing to hit working American families and hit them hard. Consumer prices spiked in June considerably more than had been forecast. Inflation is up 5.4 percent year-on-year, the fastest jump in about 13 years. Stunningly, it’s up 0.9 percent just month over month,”
“What Democrats say they want to force through this summer through reconciliation would make our current inflationary mess look like small potatoes.”
Regardless of what the political implications are for either party and its members’ positions on this bill, in order for the plan to pass via reconciliation, Democrat leaders will need to face fierce Republican opposition while getting on board all 50 members of their caucus, with VP Harris Breaking the tie.