Pelosi Wants Dem Spending Plan 'Totally Paid For'

U.S. House Speaker Pelosi holds a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington
JONATHAN ERNST
By Yuval Rosenberg

The House has resumed its summer
recess after a dramatic couple of days. Democrats
were able to pass their $3.5 trillion budget blueprint and the John
Lewis voting rights bill as well as set a date for a vote on the
bipartisan infrastructure bill. The next House floor votes are set
for September 20 — nearly a month away. Today, though,
Democratic leaders took a bit of a victory lap, with both centrists
and progressives framing the deal struck Tuesday as a win. Here’s
what you need to know.

Who Won Democrats' Big Budget Deal?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday celebrated the House’s
approval a day earlier of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget framework
— and downplayed some elements of the deal she struck to get all
Democrats on board.

"It's a wonderful morning. We had such a good day in the
Congress yesterday," Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press
conference. "I want to salute my caucus for the commitment to
values that they demonstrated in accepting the president’s budget,
the Build Back Better initiative. Again, it was a team effort for
us to win the vote."

For a while, though, it was far from certain that all of
Pelosi’s team would stick together, as a group of moderate
Democrats threatened to withhold their support for the budget
blueprint unless the House first voted on the infrastructure
bill.

The deal Pelosi made to secure the moderates’ votes included
setting a September 27 deadline for a vote on the $1 trillion
bipartisan infrastructure bill already passed by the Senate. Pelosi
said that concession was just a "clarification" of the timeframe
since surface transportation program authorizations expire at the
end of next month and an infrastructure vote would have been needed
by then anyway. "So, we're talking about a couple of days earlier,"
Pelosi said, adding that the moderates’ participation was
"constructive."

Pelosi wants the $3.5 trillion sending package paid for:
Pelosi told reporters that her goal is to have all committees
reporting their individual portions of the budget package by
September 15. She added that she wants to see the entire cost of
the legislation covered. "I’d like to have it totally paid for.
We’ll see what is possible," she said. Other Democrats have
suggested that their spending plans may not be fully offset.

Schumer says infrastructure and budget plans will meet most
of President Biden’s emissions goals: In a letter to Senate
colleagues, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that
an analysis by his office shows that the two pieces of legislation
together would put the U.S. on track to reduce carbon emissions to
about 45% of 2005 levels by 2030. Read more at
Axios.

Centrists say they got what they wanted: "With roads and
bridges crumbling across our nation, this agreement does what we
set out to do: secure a standalone vote for the bipartisan
infrastructure bill, send it to the president’s desk, and then
separately consider the reconciliation package," the centrists led
by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said in a joint statement on
Tuesday. "We have established a path forward that ensures we can
pass this once-in-a-century infrastructure investment by September
27th, allowing us to create millions of jobs and bring our nation
into the 21st century. It will receive standalone consideration,
fully delinked, and on its own merits."

Progressives say there’s no "delinking": Rep. Pramila
Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said
the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the larger spending package
were still linked as far as her caucus is concerned. "As our
members have made clear for three months, the two are integrally
tied together, and we will only vote for the infrastructure bill
after passing the reconciliation bill," she said in a
statement.

Why the moderate holdouts may have been so SALTy: "It
seems the nine members obstructed the caucus to obtain leverage in
crafting the reconciliation package to junk the $10,000 limit on
state and local tax (SALT) deductions,"
writes Washington Post Columnist Jennifer Rubin.
"If so, they suffer from political tone-deafness, as the deductions
primarily help wealthy homeowners in blue states. At a time when
Democrats are contrasting their support for working- and
middle-class Americans with the GOP’s defense of wealthy scofflaws,
and when Democrats are searching for more revenue, restoring
the SALT deductions was not going to happen."

So maybe nobody won: "Pelosi managed to keep her party
from falling apart at a crucial moment, and that’s about all.
Moderates still can’t point to passage of the bipartisan
infrastructure bill, and progressives are angry that they’ve lost
leverage to pass a sprawling social spending package," Jeff
Greenfield writes at
Politico.

"The agreement has to be accorded some level of respect, since
it keeps alive the possibility of victory for President Joe Biden’s
agenda. But what it really shows, besides Pelosi’s deftness, is
just how far Democrats are from a coherent governing force.
Particularly with a huge trust deficit between the party’s
factions, the struggle between the left and center could still
derail Democrats’ best shot at a set of accomplishments to buoy
them in 2022 and beyond."

September is going to be rough: The calendar will be
packed and the prospects for another intraparty clash over the
infrastructure and budget bills are quite high given that trust
levels between moderates and progressives are quite low. The budget
package may not be ready by the September 27 deadline for an
infrastructure vote. Progressives will worry that moderates will
bail on the reconciliation package if the infrastructure bill is
approved separately.

That will pose another challenge for Pelosi. Biden on Tuesday
praised her leadership as "masterful." She may have to demonstrate
that mastery again, working with the Senate on the reconciliation
package as well, as Democrats set up the timing of their votes in
both chambers.

Tuesday’s vote sets up a debt-ceiling showdown: Punchbowl News reports
that Tuesday’s vote "made it official -- there’s going to be a
partisan showdown over government funding and the debt limit this
fall. We all know it’s coming, but the rule included language
preventing a clean vote on a separate resolution raising the debt
limit. Democrats are now expected to pair a debt-limit increase
next month with a continuing resolution to keep federal agencies
open beyond Sept. 30, which is when government funding runs
out."

The bottom line: Democrats took a big step Tuesday toward
enacting President Biden’s economic agenda, but they’re
nowhere near done yet.

Majority of Americans Back Biden’s Spending Plans: Poll

As Democrats attempt to simultaneously pass the $1 trillion
infrastructure plan approved by a bipartisan group of senators and
the $3.5 trillion "human infrastructure" package that would advance
on a partisan basis, they have one big advantage: Most Americans
say they support both.

The bipartisan infrastructure plan received support from 63% of
respondents in a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll, the

paper reported Wednesday, while the larger
partisan package received support from 52%.

Partisan differences were substantial, though, with only 36% of
Republicans backing the bipartisan bill, compared to 89% of
Democrats. On the larger partisan package, just 21% of Republicans
expressed support, compared to 89% of Democrats.

Half of the respondents in the poll — which involved 1,000
registered voters reached by phone between Thursday, August 19 and
Tuesday, August 24, with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points
— said they want lawmakers to work together to work across party
lines on major issues, even if less is accomplished that way. But a
slim majority of Democrats (51%) say they want their
representatives to get things done, even if it means moving ahead
without Republican support.

Child Tax Credit Payments Have Pulled 3 Million Children Out of
Poverty: Study

The temporary boost to the child tax credit included in the
Covid relief package passed earlier this year prevented about 3
million children from being in poverty in July, according to an

analysis by researchers at Columbia
University.

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which President Biden
signed into law in March, made three changes to the child tax
credit that helped produce those results:

1. It increased the value of the credit from $2,000 per child to
$3,000 or $3,600, depending on age;

2. It expanded access to reach more families, especially poorer
ones that don’t file tax returns; and

3. It required a portion of the tax credits to be paid out
directly in monthly installments, starting in July.

The first batch of payments was provided to households with 59.3
million children, the researchers said, and was primarily
responsible for reducing the U.S. child poverty rate from 15.8% in
June to 11.9% in July.

More broadly, the researchers found that all Covid relief
measures – including extra unemployment benefits, stimulus checks
and food assistance – kept roughly 6 million children from being in
poverty during the month of July.

The tax credit program is expected to reach even more children
in the coming months as more households sign up. Researchers
estimate that as many as 3 million children are not yet receiving
the benefit. The payments went out to households with about 61
million children in August, which should further reduce the poverty
rate.

The enhanced child tax credit is scheduled to expire in
December, although Democrats aim to pass a longer-term extension of
the program as part of the $3.5 trillion budget plan currently
under construction and debate in Congress.

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