The House of Representatives on Thursday began debate and slowly moved toward a vote on President Joe Biden’s $1.85 trillion Build Back Better bill, a sweeping measure aimed at expanding the social safety net and devoting funds to combat climate change.
Some moderate Democrats were waiting on a score from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for a cost estimate of the sweeping legislation before allowing a vote. New cost estimates from Congress’ top fiscal analyst, released Thursday evening, suggested that moderate lawmakers’ worries about spending and deficits would be calmed, giving the bill the votes it needs for passage.
An initial batch of key figures showed that its projections were aligning closely with earlier estimates from the White House. That included tax credits to spur clean energy development, a new required paid family leave program, bolstered child care assistance and caps on seniors’ prescription drug costs.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told lawmakers in a letter Thursday evening that the chamber would soon begin final debate on the sprawling legislation. That would put the House on the doorstep of finally approving the package, a top priority for President Joe Biden that would bolster child care assistance, create free preschool, curb seniors’ prescription drug costs and beef up efforts to slow climate change.
“At the close of the debate, all that remains is to take up the vote — so that we can pass this legislation and achieve President Biden’s vision to Build Back Better!” Pelosi wrote, using Biden’s name for the measure.
The CBO score will likely be crucial to winning the support of key moderates in the House and Senate, including West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who has been critical of legislation which could add to the deficit. (Manchin was one of the key negotiators on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which Biden signed into law this week; the CBO estimated that bill would add $256 billion to the deficit.)
The Biden administration has insisted that the bill is “fully paid for,” though earlier this week the White House sought to downplay the head of the CBO’s assessment about a key revenue stream in paying for the president’s plan.
Phillip Swagel, director of the nonpartisan CBO, said Monday that a plan to beef up the IRS in order to crack down on tax cheats would yield about $120 billion over a decade, just a fraction of the $400 billion the Biden administration is counting on.
A CBO estimate released Thursday said that the tax enforcement provisions of the bill would “increase outlays by $80 billion and revenues by $207 billion, thus decreasing the deficit by $127 billion, through 2031.”
During a press gaggle aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates cast doubt on the CBO’s calculation.
“There has been wide agreements on the part of everyone involved — moderates, liberals, etc. — that CBO does not have experience analyzing revenue amounts gained from cracking down on wealthy tax cheats who are taking advantage of every honest taxpayer,” Bates said.
Bates added: “There’s a huge body of work from economic experts, including Republican former treasury secretaries, IRS commissioners who have served served under presidents of both parties, as well as (former Treasury Secretary and National Economic Council Director) Larry Summers, with whom we have sometimes had important differences, affirming that, if anything, our estimates lowball how much revenue can be brought in by cracking down on rich tax cheats.”
Swagel suggested the Biden administration is being overly optimistic that more aggressive auditing would deter wealthy people and corporations from seeking out new ways to avoid paying taxes.
Bates said, outside of the IRS enforcement projection, “CBO’s fiscal data so far lines up with our estimates that we released to all of you for costs, or they even come in below our estimates.”
The CBO also found that the prescription drug pricing provisions in the Build Back Better bill would account for $262 billion in savings.
Manchin has also expressed concerns about inflation related to the bill, after a report emerged last week that consumer prices jumped 6.2% in October from the year prior, the largest jump in decades. Roughly half of Americans (48%) blame Biden for rising inflation, according to a recently released ABC News-Washington Post poll, though wages are up and unemployment is down significantly since the Democrat took office. Fifty percent do not blame Biden much, or at all, for inflation.
The Biden administration continually points to a letter from 17 Nobel laureates in economics, which says that because the president’s agenda “invests in long-term economic capacity and will enhance the ability of more Americans to participate productively in the economy, it will ease longer-term inflationary pressures.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., put it bluntly on Wednesday: “Stronger growth, less inflation. I’ll say it again: if you want to fight inflation—if you want to lower costs and grow the economy—support Build Back Better. If you want to fight inflation, support Build Back Better.”
The news comes at the bill continues to be popular among the American people. A recently released Quinnipiac poll, which spelled mixed results for the president’s party in other regards, found that 58% of Americans support the Build Back Better bill, compared to just 36% who oppose it. The bill has the support of a majority of independents, 59-37, and an overwhelming majority of Democrats, 90-6. The same poll found it was slightly more popular than the infrastructure bill, which enjoyed 57% support.
Democrats are still hammering out the final details of the bill, with a couple of sticking points, including paid family leave and the state and local tax (SALT) deduction on property taxes. The Trump administration’s 2017 tax bill, supported unilaterally by Republicans, caps that deduction at $10,000 per year.
Some Democrats argue that it’s a benefit to the wealthy, but others, many from high-income, high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, say that it disproportionately impacts their constitutents.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, called it “bad policy” and “bad politics.”
“We’ve got to demand that the wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes, not give them more tax breaks,” Sanders said, adding: “We have to help the middle class, not the 1%.”
Surprisingly, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who shepherded the tax bill through the Senate in 2017, criticized SALT relief on Thursday, saying it benefits “the ultrawealthy out on the coast.”
But Pelosi vowed to “fight” to keep SALT relief in the bill, setting up a potential showdown as the two chambers of Congress reconcile their differences to pass the other key portion of President Biden’s economic agenda ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
Members of the House Democratic caucus are confident that they have the votes to pass the bill, even though they can only afford to lose three votes with their razor-thin majority and every Republican vowing to oppose the measure.
Spectrum News’ Ryan Chatelain contributed to this report.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
