After eighteen months of negotiations and a night of debate, the US Senate adopted, on Sunday, August 7, Joe Biden’s major “anti-inflation” plan centered on climate and health, providing a big win on the president’s stage, less than 100 days after the midterm elections .
With just their vote, Democrats have approved this plan, with investments totaling more than $430 billion (more than 420 billion euros), which will return next week to the House of Representatives for a final vote, before Mr Biden signs it into law. .
The The US President welcomed the newsSunday evening. “A lot of compromises had to be made. It always required doing important things.”He said in a statement. This bill will change America for decades to come.Immediately after the vote, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, was reassured to thunderous applause in his camp.
The largest investment made in the United States for the climate
All Republican senators voted against the text, renaming the Inflation Reduction Act, which they accused of generating unnecessary public spending. As a result of difficult negotiations with the right wing of the Democratic Party, this circumstance includes the largest investment committed in the United States for the climate – $370 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030.
With this fix, an American will get up to $7,500 in tax credits for buying an electric car. The installation of solar panels on its roof will be covered by 30%. This reform should also make it possible to strengthen the forests’ resilience to the fires ravaging the American West whose breeding is directly attributed to global warming.
Several billions of dollars in tax credits will also be offered to the industries that pollute the most in order to help them with the energy transition, a measure that the party’s left wing, which had to be behind this provision, has strongly criticized for not reaching it. More ambitious deal.
Too expensive for Republicans, not ambitious enough for left-wing Democrats
After coming to power with massive reform plans, Joe Biden saw them be buried, revived, and then buried again by a very moderate senator from his camp, Joe Manchin. In light of the weak Democratic majority in the Senate, the representative-elect of West Virginia, a state known for its coal mines, has a veto over his projects. At the end of July, the leader of the Senate Democrats was finally able to get a compromise from Mr. Manchin.
On Saturday, the senators finally began debating the text in the Orb of Blood. In the evening, they entered into a procedure called “Rama Vote”During which, for fifteen consecutive hours, elected officials proposed dozens of amendments and demanded a vote on each.
Opportunity for the Republican opposition, which considered the Biden plan too expensive, and the Democratic left, which wanted it more broadly, to present their grievances. The influential senator from the left, Bernie Sanders, made several amendments during the night that are supposed to enhance the social aspect of the text, which has been greatly curtailed in recent months.
“This bill does nothing to solve this problem.”
The text provides for $64 billion in investment in health and a gradual reduction in prices for some drugs, which could be up to ten times the cost of other wealthy countries. But progressives had to abandon their ambitions for free kindergarten, public universities, and better care for the elderly.
“Millions of retirees will still have rotten teeth and will not get the dentures, hearing aids or eyeglasses they deserve.”Mr. Sanders blasted off the bicycle. “This bill does nothing to solve this problem.”Reassured the former presidential candidate. But the Democratic camp, eager to implement this plan before the dangerous legislative elections in November and deliver a victory to the president, united and rejected the vast majority of the amendments.
Parallel to these massive investments, the bill aims to reduce the public deficit with a new minimum tax of 15% for all companies with profits exceeding $1 billion. It aims to prevent some large companies from using tax loopholes that have allowed them to pay well below the theoretical rate. It is estimated that the measure could generate more than $258 billion in US federal revenue over the next 10 years.
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