House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) likely put a smile on President Joe Biden’s face on Sept. 7, with an extraordinarily ambitious schedule for completing the key panel’s part of the president’s $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” spending plan.
“This is our historic opportunity to support working families and ensure our economy is stronger, more inclusive, and more resilient for generations to come,” Neal said in the statement.
What followed in the statement were 16 promises to create new benefits, greatly expand existing ones, and increase funding for a host of federal programs targeted by Biden to combat global warming, the CCP virus (also known as the novel coronavirus), the affordable housing shortage, and homelessness, among many other issues.
Other Democratic committee chairmen who head panels with mark-up roles on the spending plan are following similar paths. The fact that virtually all House members are back home in their districts on recess and won’t return until Sept. 20 is just one of a host of problems Democratic leaders must confront.
Much of the markup work will be done via virtual committee meetings.
The biggest of the problems, however, are likely to be Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). The Senate is split 50-50 between the parties, meaning Democrats have no margin for error in counting votes. The House is only slightly more favorable to Democrats, with a 221–213 margin, meaning Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can lose no more than four votes.
Republicans such as Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the ranking minority member of Neal’s committee, sees nothing but bad economic news being generated by the Biden plan, especially in the area of tax increases.
“Studies show that the capital gains tax alone would shrink the economy, and the left-leaning Tax Policy Center finds that Biden’s proposal raises taxes far past the amount necessary to maximize revenue. Past analyses by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation agree.
In such a scenario, there is no guarantee that Democrats will be able to force through Congress an increase in the national debt ceiling by Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
Democratic campaign strategists know that a contracting economy with spiraling consumer prices and fewer jobs being created could move voters to restore Republican control of either or both chambers of Congress in November 2022.
The LAA has previously organized protests that included a few conservative Republican House members, but multiple senior House Republican aides speaking on background told The Epoch Times they don’t expect any to be present for the Sept. 18 event.