Happy Monday and greetings from New
York, where it’s been dark since just after 5 p.m.
Yuck.
Biden Gets a Huge Win. Can Dems Deliver Another?
For President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats, it’s
one down and one to go.
After a day full of drama, the House late Friday passed
the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure framework, sending the
bill to the president’s desk and providing Biden with a much-needed
political win after months of intraparty quarrels and sagging
approval ratings.
The passage came after clashing moderate and progressive
Democrats agreed to a compromise that had five centrists commit in
writing to vote next week for the Build Back Better bill, the other
major plank of the party’s economic agenda, if a Congressional
Budget Office analysis of the package comes back in line with White
House estimates. The centrists also pledged to work toward passage
of the bill if the CBO numbers differ from what’s expected. Two
other holdout centrists did not sign on to the
statement.
Even with that agreement to address long-running factional
fights — and despite both public and private pleas from Biden for
lawmakers to approve the infrastructure bill and pass a rule for
debating the social spending package — the package would not have
passed without the support of 13 Republicans, including six from
New York and New Jersey. Six Democrats — members of the progressive
“Squad” — bucked their party to vote against the plan. The final
vote was 228 to 206.
What’s in the infrastructure bill: As a reminder,
the bill set for Biden’s signature provides for $550 billion in new
spending over five years, including $110 billion for roads a
bridges, $73 billion to upgrade the electric grid, $66 billion for
passenger and freight rail, $65 billion for broadband internet, $55
billion for water projects, $50 billion for climate change
resiliency, $42 billion for airports and ports and $39 billion for
public transit. The package also re-authorizes some $650 billion in
surface transportation funding, including a boost to highway
spending. The Congressional Budget Office said in August that the
legislation would add $256 billion to deficits through
2031.
What’s next: The focus now will shift to the Build
Back Better bill, but not before Biden and Democrats take an
extended victory lap, touting a historic, bipartisan achievement —
and it is undoubtedly historic, the largest single infrastructure
investment in more than a decade. “Well, finally: Infrastructure
Week. I’m so happy to say that: Infrastructure Week,” Biden said in
Saturday morning. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to suggest
that we took a monumental step forward as a nation.”
Congress is out this week, so the White House is expected
to hold a public signing ceremony next week, when lawmakers are
back. But the public messaging blitz has already begun, and
officials reportedly plan to fan across the country to explain what
the bill means for Americans in different regions. Biden is
scheduled to kick off that push by visiting Baltimore Wednesday to
talk about how the legislation will upgrade that nation’s ports and
help address supply chain disruptions. He told reporters on
Saturday that Americans will probably start to see the effects of
the bill “within the next two to three months.”
The administration will likely continue touting the
details of the infrastructure plan over that period, or longer.
“White House officials know the traditional knock on Democrats is
they can’t ever seem to take credit for their achievements, failing
to win over voters even with policies that are broadly popular,”
The Washington Post’s Olivier Knox
notes. “Democrats also know they can’t let that
happen this time.”
The path ahead for BBB: Democrats’ celebratory
public messaging could still be undermined by continued uncertainty
and intraparty fights over the social spending and climate
legislation.
The Congressional Budget Office score could present some
fresh challenges. First, it’s not clear yet when it will arrive,
and it might not come until the days before Thanksgiving,
potentially upending Democrats’ preferred timeline. Second, the
score could also differ in some important ways from White House
estimates, including revenue projections from beefing up IRS
enforcement efforts to close the tax gap, which the administration
says could generate about $400 billion.
Even if the CBO doesn’t add significant hurdles to the
Build Back Better bill’s path in the House, the legislation faces
an uncertain fate in the Senate, where Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)
remains opposed to the paid family and medical leave provisions
House Democrats reinserted into the package, among other elements.
And any changes could lead to renewed intraparty battles that delay
or derail the bill., “My fear is not that it won't pass but that it
will go back to the Build Back Better Manchin framework,” one
unnamed lawmaker told
the Post.
At the very least, the path ahead likely involves long
negotiations, after which any bill passed by the Senate would have
to again clear the House.
The bottom line: “I am confident that during the
week of Nov. 15, the House will pass the Build Back Better Act,”
Biden said in a statement Friday night. But it will likely be at
least several more weeks before Biden can start thinking about
hosting another signing ceremony. Oh, and lawmakers will also have
to deal with funding the government early next month to avoid a
shutdown — and there’s likely a repeat looming of the fight over
raising the debt ceiling. Those battles may well complicate the
timing of the Build Back Better bill.
Elon Musk’s $15 Billion Tax-the-Rich Question
Tesla founder Elon Musk –the richest person in the world —
polled Twitter users on Saturday whether he should sell 10% of his
stock in the company. “I will abide by the results of this poll,
whichever way it goes,” he wrote.
The question appeared to come in response to a Democratic
proposal to tax the unrealized gains of billionaires — a plan that
Musk has slammed.
The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated on
Friday that the proposal, developed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), would
raise more than
$557 billion in federal revenue over 10 years —
enough to, say, cover all the new spending in the infrastructure
bill the House just passed . It would apply to about 700 taxpayers
with more than $1 billion in assets or reported income topping $100
million for three consecutive years. The idea wasn’t included in
the White House’s Build Back Better framework and faces opposition
from many Democrats.
“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of
tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” Musk
tweeted.
His poll question got more than 3.5 million votes, with
58% saying he should sell — a result that sent Tesla shares lower
on Monday.
“Musk said he was raising the question because he does not
take a cash salary as Tesla’s chief executive, and therefore
wouldn’t have any way to pay a large tax bill without selling some
of his Tesla shares, which make up the vast majority of his
wealth,” Stephen Gandel notes at The New York Times.
But Gandel and numerous other outlets report that, poll or
no poll, Musk likely would have had to start selling millions of
his shares soon because he faces a tax bill of potentially more
than $10- billion as the result of stock options for 22.8 million
shares he was awarded in 2012 — options that are set to expire in
August 2022 that could be worth nearly $30 billion now. In order to
exercise the options, Musk would have to pay the income tax on his
gains. “Combined, the state and federal tax rate will be 54.1%,”
CNBC’s Robert Frank
reports. “So the total tax bill on his options, at
the current price, would be $15 billion.”
Yet Business Insider’s Ben Winck and Andy Kiersz note that
Musk’s tax bill could potentially be far higher if the Wyden tax
proposal was in force right now. “If the ‘billionaires' tax’ was
already law, and Musk's net worth stayed the same through the end
of the year, the Tesla CEO would owe the government about $40
billion,” they
write.
Chart of the Day: The Red-Blue Divide in Covid’s Death
Toll
“The gap in Covid’s death toll between red and blue
America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous
point,” David Leonhardt reports at
The New York Times. “This situation is a tragedy,
in which irrational fears about vaccine side effects have
overwhelmed rational fears about a deadly virus. It stems from
disinformation — promoted by right-wing media, like Rupert
Murdoch’s Fox News, the Sinclair Broadcast Group and online sources
— that preys on
the distrust that results from stagnant living
standards.”
Send your tips and feedback to yrosenberg@thefiscaltimes.com.
News
How a $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Survived an Intraparty
Brawl – New York Times
Biden Takes Case to Voters After Passage of Major
Infrastructure Bill – Bloomberg
Centrist Democrats Now Hold the Cards as Infrastructure Bill
Heads to Biden's Desk – NBC News
This Is Where the States Want Billions in Infrastructure
Funding Spent – New York Times
Paid Family Leave Was an Idea Born in the U.S. 100 Years Ago.
And We Still Don’t Have It. – Washington Post
Democrats Keep College Completion Cash in Spending
Bill – Politico
The Biden Administration Is ‘Prepared to Defend’ the Vaccine
Rules for Big Employers, the Surgeon General Says – New
York Times
Big Bird Got His Pfizer Shot, and Conservatives Are Calling
It Vaccine ‘Propaganda’ – Washington Post
Views and Analysis
What Does Infrastructure Package’s Passing Mean for the
Democrats’ Bigger Social Spending Bill? – Amber
Phillips, Washington Post
Passing Big Spending Programs Isn’t Supposed to Be
Easy – Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg
Why Democrats Should Thank the Moderates in Their
Party – Karen Tumulty, Washington Post
Democrats Avoided Defeating Themselves. Now They Must Defeat
the Plutocratic Populists. – E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington
Post
Progressives 'Incredibly Pessimistic' They'll Get What They
Want in Social Spending Bill – Jacqueline Alemany and
Theodoric Meyer, Washington Post
The Squad Is Right Not to Trust Democratic
Moderates – James Downie, Washington Post
How Biden’s Infrastructure Win Falls Short in One Big
Area – Tanya Snyder, Politico
Build Back Better Won’t Be Perfect. But It Can Be Much Better
Than It Is Now. – Washington Post Editorial
Board
Bill Clinton Saved His Presidency. Here’s How Biden Can,
Too. – Mark Penn and Andrew Stein, New York
Times
The Battle Over Biden’s Child Tax Credit and Its Impact on
Poverty and Workers – Glenn Kessler, Washington
Post
Wokeness Derails the Democrats – Maureen Dowd, New
York Times
Will Biden's Infrastructure Bill Save the
Democrats? – Joel Mathis, The Week
A Pollster Tested 8 Pieces of Covid Misinformation. On 6 of
8, More Republicans Said They Were True Than False. –
Aaron Blake, Washington Post