The White House and Congress reach an agreement in principle to fund Biden’s social program | International

The Democratic leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, and his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, have announced this Thursday a principle of agreement between the White House and the Democrats of the Congress on the fiscal “framework” that will finance the colossal investment of $ 3.5 billion from President Joe Biden’s social program. Differences between the two factions of the party had compromised its viability even before it was submitted to the Senate, as the House gave it the green light in August. Thanks to the task of fighting behind the scenes of senior White House officials, and the personal intervention in the last days of the president, the agreement between progressives and moderate democrats seems to give wings to Biden’s great social program, a fundamental pillar of his mandate.

Neither Schumer nor Pelosi have offered details of the agreement. “We know that we can cover the proposals that the president wants to carry out,” said Pelosi. Schumer’s definition (“framework agreement”, but also fiscal “menu of options”) suggests that there are still fringes to be discussed. The announcement has surprised Democrats, although party sources maintain that they have yet to reach specific agreements on the tax increase on the highest incomes, that is, if the tax reform projected to finance the program will tax more income or also capital; In this regard, the positions of the two factions diverge. The Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, has also attended the presentation of the agreement in Washington, who in recent weeks has been very actively involved, together with Vice President Kamala Harris, in overcoming resistance by weighing the benefits of the initiative.

The ambitious program of social reforms, which ranges from free early childhood education to tax subsidies for children or dependent family members, through the extension of the two Social Security programs for the elderly and the population without resources, would mean the largest expansion of coverage in America since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society program in the 1960s.

Democrats hope the program, dubbed Build Back Better (Rebuild better) and so ambitious in objectives and investments that for some analysts it would be equivalent to putting all the New Deal of President Roosevelt in a single initiative, get ahead this fall in the Senate thanks to the mechanism known as budget reconciliation, which avoids a two-thirds majority in a House where Democrats and Republicans tie for seats (50 each). Through reconciliation, a bill can be passed by simple majority, for which the casting vote, decisive, of Vice President Harris, president of the Senate, would suffice.

The program Build Back Better, or human infrastructure plan as defined by the White House, is the twin of the 1.2 trillion physical infrastructure plan already sanctioned in June by a bipartisan agreement, and which will reach the House of Representatives next Monday. It should be remembered that the initial endowment of the latter had to be adjusted downward – one trillion dollars less than initially expected – to satisfy the Republican opposition. This physical plan aims to modernize the country’s obsolete infrastructures, from the renovation or construction of bridges and roads to the extension of high-speed internet to small towns or the decontamination of drinking water pipes.

After the Afghanistan fiasco, Biden wanted to focus on his domestic agenda, the spearhead of which is represented by the two infrastructure plans. The principle of tax agreement on how to finance it is a first relief, although the rejection of Democrats like Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema persists. To heat the state of opinion on the matter, a team of White House economists has revealed this Thursday a statistical study on the tax returns of the 400 richest households in the United States, which would demonstrate the damage at the time of collection that It involves assessing income but not wealth or capital income. President Biden has also contributed to the debate. “I’m fed up with the gigantic big super-rich corporations not paying their fair share in taxes,” he wrote on Twitter this Wednesday.

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