The US Senate passed President Joe Biden’s flagship economic package after a marathon voting session that handed the president a major political victory just months before the midterm elections.
The climate, tax and health care bill, known as the Curbing Inflation Act, passed 51 to 50, with the vote split by party and vice versa. President Kamala Harris casting a deciding vote in an equally divided Senate.
The bill still needs to pass the House of Representatives and be signed by the president before becoming law, but its passage by the Senate marks the most significant in a string of recent victories for Biden as he aims to defend slim majorities in both chambers in November. .
Earlier this summer, lawmakers passed bills providing for new subsidies for American chip manufacturing and agreed to bipartisan gun control legislation in the wake of deadly shootings in Texas and At New York.
The Cut Inflation Act includes some of the most significant climate legislation enacted in the United States, with $369 billion dedicated to climate and clean energy programs. It also includes new measures allowing the government to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs, a provision for the imposition of a minimum tax of 15% on large corporations and a new 1% tax on buybacks. shares.
However, Kyrsten Sinema, the centrist senator from Arizona, and six other Democrats joined Republicans in passing a last-minute amendment that would create an exclusion for private equity from the proposed minimum corporate tax.
Business groups and Republicans have fiercely opposed imposing the minimum 15% tax, arguing it would suppress business investment and hurt US exporters.
Although most Republican efforts to amend the bill during the long legislative session failed, GOP lawmakers succeeded Sunday morning in removing a $35 price cap for insulin from the package. The cap will still apply to Medicare patients.
Passage of the final bill follows weeks of dramatic intraparty negotiations among Democrats, including a surprising upset of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.
Manchin had refused to back previous versions of the package on the grounds that it would fuel inflation, nullifying Democrats’ chances of pushing the bill through a tightly divided House.
However, Manchin and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer brokered an agreed-upon bill late last month, before winning Sinema’s support last week.
She gave her backing to the bill after Democrats agreed to remove a provision changing the preferential treatment of private equity and hedge fund profits known as “scope.”