After a year of negotiations, President Joe Biden celebrated securing the 50th and final Senate Democratic vote he required to wrangle a watered-down version of his signature climate and healthcare spending bill through Congress.
In a statement released by the White House, Biden described Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) agreeing to support the Inflation Reduction Act, proposed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) last week, as “another critical step” toward decreasing the cost of living for America’s families.”
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“The Inflation Reduction Act will help Americans save money on prescription drugs, health premiums, and much more,” Biden wrote Thursday night. “It will make our tax system more fair by making corporations pay a minimum tax.”
Biden added, “It also makes the largest investment in history in combating climate change and increasing energy security, creating jobs here in the US and saving people money on their energy costs.”
After a week of sending smoke signals, Sinema released a statement saying she was prepared to work with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) in particular to enact carried interest tax reforms, “protecting investments in America’s economy and encouraging continued growth” while “closing the most egregious loopholes that some abuse to avoid paying taxes.”
“We have agreed to remove the carried interest tax provision, protect advanced manufacturing, and boost our clean energy economy in the Senate’s budget reconciliation legislation,” she wrote Thursday evening. “Subject to the Parliamentarian’s review, I’ll move forward.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office assessed earlier this week that the legislation as it stood then would reduce federal budget deficits by $102 billion over 10 years and estimated boosting the IRS budget would lead to tax enforcement that will save $203.7 billion. The White House argued this will “help ease near-term inflationary pressures” at a time of high inflation. The measure, when it was announced by Schumer and Manchin, proposed extending Affordable Care Act healthcare premium subsidies, which the CBO estimated to cost $64 billion over 10 years, and $369 billion on energy and climate investments, in addition to tinkering with the tax code.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended Biden’s minimal role in the negotiations Thursday afternoon, insisting the president was “grateful” for the deal because “it’s going to change the lives of middle-class Americans across the country.”
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Sinema’s endorsement delivers a policy achievement roughly 100 days before November’s midterm elections, a cycle predicted to be challenging for Democrats. Schumer has said the final iteration of the reconciliation bill, expected to be passed by a simple Democratic majority of 51 with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote, would be introduced in the Senate on Saturday.
Republicans have indicated they plan to offer an array of amendments.
