The finish line now looks close: after months of negotiations and intra-party clashes within the Democratic ranks, the House of Representatives will finally hold a vote today, Friday, on the big public investment plans Joe Biden wants to see. be adopted to give impetus to his presidency, which is going through severe trials in its first year.
The meeting of the body will begin at 08:00 (local time; 14:00 Greek time), announced last Thursday night top executives of the Democrats, in order to hold a later vote on the plans of the White House resident for the purpose of “reconstruction” of America, as it puts it.
These are “historic” bills that will lead to a “transformation” of the United States, said the deputy representative of the US presidency, Karin Jean-Pierre.
Under increasing pressure after the painful defeat in Virginia, the Democrats in Congress were trying to synchronize their violins yesterday, with the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, promising: “we will adopt both bills”.
Time is pressing.
Clashes between the left and the center-left of Joe Biden’s party deprive him of a political victory that he desperately needs to breathe new life into his presidency.
The issue is “urgent”, as Mrs Jean-Pierre sees it.
The investment plans promised by the head of state are popular, according to several polls. After all, a note from the rating agency Moody’s, published on Thursday, contains the estimate that they can create 1.5 million jobs in the next decade.
One year until the by-elections
But Joe Biden, who campaigned for his negotiating talents thanks to his long Senate career, has clashed with his party and seen his popularity plummet.
Before his tour of the G20 summit and COP26, the US president went – twice – to the Capitol Hill, to try to speed up the adoption of the two lighthouse bills.
The investment program to repair the road network, ports, bridges and other dilapidated infrastructure is projected to cost $ 1.2 trillion – equivalent to all of Spain’s GDP – and is backed by Democrats and some Republicans.
The second, even more gigantic, welfare and climate aspect, dubbed Build Back Better, envisions, among other things, reducing the cost of daycare and investing $ 550 billion to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and global warming by 2030.
But efforts to move forward have not borne fruit so far.
Returning from Europe, the American president, obviously impatient now, pressures his party to put its house in order, to move on.
“Democrats have never been so close to finalizing and passing bills,” Sen. Chuck Sumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, assured him.
However, their fate is in the hands of an elected official, who to this day refuses to side with them: Senator Joe Manchin, who represents West Virginia.
Given the slim majority of Democrats in the Senate, the senator has virtually a veto over the bills.
He reiterated his concerns yesterday morning about the impact they will have on US public debt and inflation.
In his state, one of the poorest in the United States, “people are terrified of rising fuel, food and utility prices,” he told CNN.
Essentially stigmatizing what he considers to be the party’s excessive spending, which is accused of failing to catch the pulse of the country, losing control of Virginia on Tuesday, a state that voted overwhelmingly in favor of Joe Biden in his presidential election. 2020.
What makes the finding even more ominous is that this electoral contest was characterized as a general rehearsal in view of the next big political battle: the whole country will be called to the polls for the by-elections in November 2022.
Joe Biden’s party will then face the risk of losing control of both houses of Congress, which would further complicate the passage of any sweeping reform.
SOURCE:
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Source From: Capital
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