With just three weeks left before Congress breaks for holiday recess, Democrats are scrambling to deliver on a crushing to-do list — with lawmakers working overtime to keep the government open, lift the debt ceiling, pass a defense policy bill, and advance to President Joe Biden’s desk a $1.85 trillion spending bill.
Currently, House leaders say they are eyeing a vote next week on the Build Back Better bill, which includes key provisions to increase climate and social safety spending programs. It would also extend by one year a child tax credit lawmakers passed this year under the American Rescue Plan.
Without action, the child tax credits will expire at the end of December, leaving the fate of thousands of Americans in peril.
In a press briefing Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stressed the urgency for lawmakers to pass the spending bill, telling reporters: “If we don’t act on Build Back Better, we won’t be able to extend child care costs,” she said.
“In our view, this is a strong case for moving forward with this agenda[:] Costs to American families, how it’s impacting them—and if we don’t act now, we won’t be able to address them in the short term, either,” Psaki added.
Those impacted by the child tax credit payments include such as Sharmayne Cosby, a single mother of two who lives with her youngest daughter in Washington, D.C.
Cosby was diagnosed in 1999 with sarcoidosis, a lung disease that has left her confined to an oxygen tank, and later with pulmonary hypertension. She relies on the tank to function, explaining, “When I do anything, I get a little windy.”
Though Cosby currently receives Social Security payments, she says the money doesn’t go far. “After I pay my rent, maybe one bill, [the check] is gone,” she old Spectrum News in an interview.
The child tax credit payments “[have] been a blessing,” for her family, she said. “I mean, a complete blessing.”
“Some people might say it’s a little, some people might say it’s a lot,” Cosby said. “But to me, to be able to go to sleep knowing you have all your bills paid — [your] lights may not go out; your water will be on when you wake up the next morning … I’m very appreciative for that,” she said. “And it’s been helpful, it’s been very helpful.”
When she received her first payment from the American Rescue Plan, she said, “I was ecstatic.” “I thought that someone else had accidentally put money in my account,” she said. It allowed Cosby to pay another past-due bill – this one, to keep the internet on, allowing her 15-year-old daughter to do her homework.
But the Build Back Better bill isn’t the only deadline looming large over lawmakers’ heads. Before Congress gavels for recess, members must also raise the U.S. debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on its loans; send an appropriations bill to the president’s desk, and finish work on a massive bipartisan defense authorization bill, which has already been delayed much later than usual.
Some Republicans argued that the focus should be on meeting those deadlines, rather than of on a massive social spending plan that they argue is wasteful.
“When we talk about what happens if the government shuts down, the other side of that is what happens if we pass massive spending bills, it depresses wages, it kills job opportunities,” Richard Stern, a senior budget policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, told Spectrum News in an interview.
As lawmakers barrel towards the year-end cliff, they’ve reacted with a trademark mix of resignation and cynicism.
“Here we go again,” Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., quipped to reporters earlier this month.
Others did less to mince their words: “It’s going to be a train wreck,” Senate minority whip John Thune, R-S.D., said simply when asked about the long to-do list ahead.
For Cosby, it’s not about the party infighting or the protracted negotiations that have paralyzed Congress for years.
It’s about extending a program that she knows firsthand can be life-changing.
“I think they should extend [the child tax credit],” she told Spectrum News. “It is very, very helpful.”
Asked if she had a message for lawmakers, Cosby encouraged members to come “out in the community,” to “speak to some of us, [and] hear our stories.” “Because all of us are not bad. And all of us are not just not sitting with our hands out.”
“If you have the power to help us,” she said, “Why not?”
