WATCH: U.S. Senate passes $740 billion “Inflation Reduction” Act with @VP Kamala Harris casting tie-breaking vote. #USA
🎥: @TPostMillennial pic.twitter.com/AIZFoMXbqq
— BNN United States (@BNNUS) August 7, 2022
The Senate passage of major climate/tax/drug price/health care legislation without a single Republican vote added to a run of good developments for President Biden.
Does it offset the Big Lies? Mid-term elections might provide some indication.
For now, I’m happy things are getting done. I’ve said before that few commentators summarize these issues better than Heather Richardson’s Letter from an American. You can subscribe for free to her daily commentary, but she’s worth supporting with contributions.
Her report today on Sunday’s vote in the Senate recounts the savings to come in energy tax credits; lower prescription drug prices (this could have been better without hard-hearted Republican opposition to lower insulin costs for all); higher taxes for corporations making more than $1 billion; better enforcement of existing tax law (this is not a tax increase, but better enforcement by an agency crippled by the Trump administration); extended subsidies for health care, and measures addressing climate change.
Democrats used the budget reconciliation process to avoid a filibuster. Richardson notes Republicans used the process to slash income taxes during the Trump years, which exploded the national debt and did nothing to increase employment or wages.
Writes Richardson:
In contrast, in the past 18 months, Democrats have rebuilt the economy after the pandemic shattered it, invested in technology and science, expanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to stand against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, eliminated al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, pulled troops out of Afghanistan, passed the first gun safety law in almost 30 years, put a Black woman on the Supreme Court, reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, addressed the needs of veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, and invested in our roads, bridges, and manufacturing. And for much of this program, they have managed to attract Republican votes. [Almost never from an Arkansan in Congress.]
Now they are turning to lowering the cost of prescription drugs—long a priority—and tackling climate change, all while lowering the deficit.
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne noted accurately today that what these measures do is far more than the sum of their parts. They show Americans that democracy is messy and slow but that it works, and it works for them. Since he took office, this has been President Joe Biden’s argument: he would head off the global drive toward authoritarianism by showing that democracy is still the best system of government out there.
At a time when authoritarians are trying to demonstrate that democracies cannot function nearly as effectively as the rule of an elite few, he is proving them wrong.
This is a very big deal indeed.
Amen.