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JULY
**28, 2022**
Dayen on TAP
Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer Have a Surprise for You
An 18-month odyssey culminates in a smaller-than-promised,
bigger-than-expected agreement to lower health care costs, tax
corporations, and protect the planet.
Five years ago today, the late John McCain strode onto the Senate floor
and delivered a thumbs-down
to the Republican repeal
of Obamacare, a white whale they had been pursuing since well before
obtaining a governing trifecta. The legislative agenda in the Trump
years narrowed to a historically unpopular tax cut and deregulation.
One year ago today, Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin signed a secret deal
to deliver a $1.5 trillion reconciliation bill that would include "no
additional handouts or transfer payments" on any health or family care
policies, and investments in "fuel neutral" energy, with carbon-capture
technologies mandated for fossil fuel infrastructure, a zero-emission
vehicle credit that included hydrogen fuel cell cars, with parity for
both renewable and fossil fuel tax credits. Among the measures to help
pay for it were a corporate minimum tax of 15 percent and an end to the
carried interest loophole.
For 364 days, Manchin went back and forth on pretty much all of these
provisions, rejecting the bill outright, then crawling back to the
table, going into bargaining with Schumer, leaving that bargaining, and
coming back. And one year to the day later, we have a bill called the
Inflation Reduction Act of 2022
,
which includes everything in that previous paragraph and a lot more on
energy and climate, plus the ACA insurance exchange subsidies and
prescription drug price reforms we knew about. But overall, the bill
spends $433 billion, a little over $1 trillion less than that original
topline. Much of its revenue goes to deficit reduction.
There is no such thing as a genuine surprise in Washington-usually.
This was a genuine surprise. I had been talking to people this week who
would or should have known that talks between Manchin and Schumer,
thought to be moribund, were taking place. The closest I got to
foreknowledge was one source saying that they just didn't believe it.
An army of reporters, lobbyists, and hangers-on didn't know this was
happening.
The reveal was made a few hours after the Senate cleared the CHIPS and
Science Act, a bill that offers semiconductor manufacturers subsidies
for reshoring and boosts science programs. Mitch McConnell had
threatened that bill, something highly cherished by Schumer, if
Democrats persisted with a party-line bill that raised taxes and boosted
clean energy. When Manchin walked away from negotiations
with Schumer just two weeks ago over those two items, McConnell let his
guard down and allowed a vote on CHIPS, which was popular with many of
his Republican colleagues. Schumer and Manchin waited until that cleared
the Senate before announcing a reconciliation deal with taxes and
climate back in.
If you told me a cosmic ray hit Washington and flipped everyone's
brains, giving Schumer the Machiavellian cunning of a Republican and
giving McConnell the guileless approach of a Democrat, that might be a
more plausible explanation for this display than the truth. It's a
near-legendary turn of events that infuriated McConnell so much he took
hostage a bill to give dying veterans exposed to toxic burn pits medical
care, something Republicans passed overwhelmingly just a few weeks ago
(it needed a technical fix). The combination of the revival of the Biden
agenda and red-faced Republicans making terrible choices on highly
popular legislation is one for the ages.
Read the full story at prospect.org
~ DAVID DAYEN
Follow David Dayen on Twitter
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Cut Off Private Equity's Money Spigot
A variety of legislative and regulatory actions would make it hard for
private equity to stay in business. That should be the goal. BY DAVID
DAYEN
Why We Need Social Housing
What Medicare for All is for health care, social housing is for shelter.
BY RAMENDA CYRUS
An Industrial Policy Without Worker Protections
The domestic manufacturing bill was meant to be the new frontier of
bringing good jobs to America. But workers became an afterthought. BY
LEE HARRIS
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