fbpx

The Challenge of a Career Without a Margin for Schumer and Pelosi


Ms. Pelosi has been through difficult situations before. She had to persuade anti-abortion Democrats to support the House’s version of the Affordable Care Act, without losing liberals who were already smart about the Senate excluding a new government-run plan or a new plan that could compete with the “public option.” Private insurance in the insurance market of the bill.

Senate Democratic leaders then suddenly lost their 60-vote majority after Scott Brown, a Republican, shocked Washington by winning the special election in Massachusetts to fill the Senate seat vacated by the death of Edward M. Kennedy. Ms. Pelosi had to persuade House Democrats to swallow their pride, forget months of painstaking deliberation, and pass the Senate’s version of the Affordable Care Act because the House-Senate compromise would be thwarted by Republicans.

“The Affordable Care Act was a pretty big challenge,” said Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Representative, who was a leader at the time. “So, to pass comprehensive health reform and completely transform the healthcare delivery system in this country? Yes, that’s what I would call comparable to the current effort.”

The social policy and climate change bill does not create an entirely new government function the way the health law does, but within the scope of its ambitions, it may be even more difficult to remove. It would expand groundbreaking income support programs like the child tax credit adopted this year, make kindergarten universal and community college nearly universal, create a federally paid family and medical leave benefit, and seek to steer the country firmly off oil, gas, and coal. to renewable fuels and electric vehicles, just to name a few of its programs. And he would pay for all this in ways that had probably never been tried before, by taxing the rich and the corporations.

This has created any number of choke points that could sink the bill, given the narrow majority of Democrats. Oregon Representative Kurt Schrader said he wanted a bill that spent less than $1 trillion over 10 years. Several House members say they can’t accept the bill’s tough approach to prescription drug prices. One of them, California Representative Scott Peters, voted against the entire pack on Saturday as he left the Budget Committee, another bad sign for Democrats.

Ms Cinema from Arizona told her colleagues privately that she would not accept any increase in the corporate or income tax rate. But recent discussions by Senate Democrats about adding a carbon tax to the bill to both fight climate change and help replace that income have countered concerns voiced by three House Democrats from Texas. In their letter to Ms Cinema and Ms Manchin, they stated that they oppose various provisions of the bill aimed at combating climate change, and also oppose increasing the 2017 minimum tax on overseas income from US companies. .



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

(0)