Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, in a reversal, announced on Wednesday that he has agreed to include hundreds of billions of dollars for climate and energy programs, and tax increases, and agreed to support Build Back Better as a whole.
The package for climate and tax aims to subsidize health care and lower the cost of prescription drugs. Manchin's announcement comes less than two weeks after abruptly upending hopes for such an agreement this summer.
Build Back Better Bill
It would set aside $369 billion for climate and energy proposals and is considered to be the most ambitious climate action ever taken by Congress. The package would raise an estimated $451 billion in new tax revenue over the next 10 years while cutting federal spending on prescription drugs by $288 billion.
The deal was announced by Manchin and Sen. Chuck Schumer and its product would reduce the federal deficit by roughly $300 billion while also seeking to push down the cost of health care, prescription medicines, and electricity, as per the New York Times.
However, the plan falls far short of the ambitious domestic policy and tax package that United States President Joe Biden proposed last year. On the other hand, Democrats who are looking toward midterm elections that are likely to be shaped by voters' concerns about soaring costs, pitched it as a targeted attack on the rapid price increases.
Not many details about the package were immediately available but the announcement suggested that Democrats could move in the coming days to salvage a major piece of their domestic agenda. Only weeks ago it appeared doomed given Manchin's refusal to quickly support it.
According to Fox News, Manchin and Schumer announced that they came to an agreement on a reconciliation bill after more than a year of negotiations among Democrats. For months, the West Virginia senator frustrated other lawmakers for consistently refusing to support party-line legislation that at one point cost over $3 trillion.
Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer
Democrats termed that legislation "Build Back Better" and Manchin shut down negotiations on the bill late last year. However, as the left struggled for a legislative win ahead of the midterms, Schumer kept up talks directly with Manchin through the spring and summer.
In a lengthy statement on Wednesday, the moderate senator said that those talks resulted in a deal for a pared-back version of the Build Back Better bill that includes tax, climate, and prescription drug provisions.
Manchin said, "for too long, the reconciliation debate in Washington has been defined by how it can help advance Democrats' political agenda called Build Back Better. Build Back Better is dead, and instead, we have the opportunity to make our country stronger by bringing Americans together."
The deal is also crucial now because the Senate is a little over a week away from starting a month-long recess when many Democrats will campaign for re-election. The news about the agreement also came hours after the Senate passed a separate bill to invest $52 billion in U.S. manufacturing of semiconductors, sending it to the House to consider as soon as this week, CNN reported.
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