WASHINGTON — At a moment when American democracy looks increasingly vulnerable, President Joe Biden and Democrats pointed to their third landmark bill, a capstone on two years of significant legislative progress, as evidence that American government is working once again.
A nearly $400 billion investment in clean energy subsidies will mark the United States’ most serious effort ever to combat climate change. A cap on prescription drug costs will ensure that seniors on Medicare pay no more than $2,000 a year for their medications. And an extension on subsidies provided during the COVID-19 pandemic will lower health care costs for 13 million Americans.
None of these long-sought changes to U.S. law appeared likely a month ago, when last-ditch negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., his party’s critical 50th vote in the evenly divided Senate, appeared to break down. But those talks quickly resumed, leading to a breakthrough.
On Tuesday, Biden sat down at a small desk in the White House State Dining Room to scrawl his name in ink on the $700 billion package, which Manchin and Schumer dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, and made all those changes a reality.
“We are in a season of substance,” Biden said before signing the bill into law. “Today offers further proof that the soul of America is vibrant; the future of America is bright and the promise of America is real and just beginning.”
The legislation, the president added, “is about showing the American people that the democracy still works in America — notwithstanding ... all the talk of its demise.”
Democrats, despite their slim congressional majorities, have now managed — at seemingly the last possible second — to deliver on several of their 2020 campaign promises. The deal is far less than what Biden had hoped when he threw his weight behind a $3.5 trillion proposal that included paid family leave, a child tax credit extension and other benefits for working families a year ago. But the ultimate compromise amounts to far more than most Democrats expected earlier this summer. After months of frustrations with Manchin, many Democrats are ecstatic that, in the end, his bill went as far as it does.
The final compromise sailed through the Senate and then the House, even without a single Republican vote. The House approved the measure Friday, 220 to 207, just days after it squeaked through the Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a 50-50 tie.
Democratic lawmakers have given themselves another accomplishment to showcase for voters this fall, one that casts the Biden presidency, bogged down by a difficult 12-month stretch, in a new light.
Last week, Biden signed a bipartisan bill to boost domestic microchip production, another providing healthcare for veterans exposed to toxic materials on the battlefield and formal accession protocols for Finland and Sweden to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a move the Senate approved on a 95-1 vote. With Tuesday’s signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s aides argue that his first-term legislative accomplishments surpass those of his recent predecessors.
The Inflation Reduction Act passed on a party-line vote, as did 2021’s $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan. But the microchip bill, the veterans health bill and last year’s $1-trillion infrastructure overhaul all won cross-party support, fulfilling a Biden vow to bring bipartisan legislating back to Washington.
“For anyone who thought Washington was broken, and couldn’t do big things, Democrats have shown real change is possible,” Schumer said at Tuesday’s signing ceremony.
But despite Republican and Democrats’ renewed willingness to work together in Congress, American democracy remains under threat.
Biden’s predecessor, under investigation on multiple fronts, continues to test the country’s faith in its own Constitution, undermining the rule of law and stoking America’s already sectarian politico-cultural divisions.
Former President Donald Trump’s enduring grip on an angry and increasingly anti-democratic Republican electorate is likely to be confirmed Tuesday evening, when Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who has used her place on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to lambaste the former president, is likely to lose to a primary challenger backed by Trump. And near nonstop cable news coverage of Trump’s legal exposure in the week following the FBI’s search and recovery of boxes of highly classified material from his Palm Beach, Florida, estate has already overwhelmed coverage of Democratic wins on Capitol Hill.
“Republicans are talking about elections being stolen and how they won’t certify (the vote) in 2024 and Democrats are talking about how they’re passing historic legislation. They are just in totally different universes,” said Sarah Longwell, a GOP consultant, media personality and founder of the group Republican Voters Against Trump.
The parties’ disagreement over the merits of the Inflation Reduction Act will be a critical point of contrast as they campaign this fall. The bill’s $375 billion in spending, tax credits and loans includes measures aimed at boosting adoption of solar panels, improving home energy efficiency, adding emission-reducing equipment to coal- and gas-powered power plants, and implementing air pollution controls for farms, ports and low-income communities. Democrats hope that together, those efforts will make a significant dent in carbon emissions over the next decade. And in the short term, the bill delivers what environmental activists and many younger voters were clamoring for.
“This bill meets the moment,” said Pete Maysmith, senior vice president of campaigns at the League of Conservation Voters. “By getting the biggest investment to combat the climate crisis ever across the finish line, the Democrats married needed policy with smart politics.”
Longwell’s recent focus groups with Democratic voters, she noted, have been marked by a sudden enthusiasm that had been missing for months. The spurt of legislative achievements, she said, “helps beat back on that narrative that Democrats are inept and impotent.”
“The reason it feels like it’s the best of times and the worst of times is because of the (Supreme Court’s) abortion decision and all of these Trump acolytes winning Republican primaries,” she continued. “Democrats see some wins but also the threat that’s shaping up, and that’s refocusing the conversation so it’s not entirely about inflation and the economy.”
While Democrats plan to make the case that they have done what they promised to do, Republicans will say that the additional spending is reckless during a period of runaway inflation and that the tax hikes on corporations, which Democrats say will offset the new spending and reduce the deficit, will stifle economic growth.
The GOP has also criticized the package’s $80 billion in new funding to the Internal Revenue Service, which will allow for the hiring of thousands of new employees to ease agency backlogs and conduct more audits of taxpayers. Although Democrats insist the additional audits will focus on the wealthy, Republicans have sought to convince middle-class voters that they, too, will face increased scrutiny.
Bullish that the package on the whole is a political winner, the White House is set to launch an August campaign blitz, with Cabinet members traveling to 23 states to explain the benefits of the measure.
“Our internal polling shows that messages touting the cost-lowering features of the Inflation Reduction Act — lowering health care costs, prescription drug costs, and utility bills — are among the highest testing messages ever,” White House senior adviser Anita Dunn and Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a memo last week. “We will make clear that the President and Congressional Democrats beat the special interests and delivered what was best for the American people.”
Democrats will hold a larger “celebration” for the legislation on Sept. 6, when lawmakers are back in Washington.
