In a tweet on Tuesday morning, Biden said, “Later today, with the signing of the Cut Inflation Act, we are making history.”
The The house passed the bill Friday in a 220-207 vote, a few days after the The Senate narrowly passed it in a party-line vote, with Vice President Harris serving as the tiebreaker. The bill’s passage marked one of the most successful legislative efforts by Democrats in Congress this session, ahead of a contentious midterm election – and also one that seemed increasingly unlikely for about a year and a half. .
Last year, a larger $2 trillion spending package known as the Build Back Better Act stalled in Congress after encountering opposition from moderate Democratic senators. After weeks of negotiations with the White House, Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) said in december that he could not go ahead with the bill.
But last month, Manchin announced that he had struck a surprise deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) on what would become the Inflation Reduction Act. Although smaller than the Build Back Better plan, the new legislation aimed to achieve many of the same goals, including spending an estimated $370 billion on climate change and clean energy generation.
Biden is expected to deliver remarks at the signing, which will be held in the White House State Dining Room.
According to the White House, Biden will hold a Cabinet meeting in the coming weeks focused on implementing the Cut Inflation Act, as well as trips across the country to promote how the new law should. help Americans. The White House is also planning an event on September 6 to celebrate the signing of the bill.
The Inflation Reduction Act would put about 370 billion dollars in the fight against climate change and boosting energy production in the United States, encouraging private companies to produce more renewable energy and households to transform their use and consumption of energy. The bill would also allow Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs and extend health insurance subsidies to millions of Americans.
To pay for the expenses, the bill would generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue through new tax provisions, the largest of which will fall on the nation’s big corporations. It would also give the badly underfunded Internal Revenue Service its biggest budget increase in its history — a provision of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) critical like the one that would translate to “an army of tax officials to spy on your bank accounts”.
At a bill-writing ceremony for the Cut Inflation Act on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) called it a “glorious day” and said noted that the passage of the bill followed Biden signing several other key pieces of legislation into law, including one aimed at expand assistance for veterans exposed to toxic combustion fireplaces during their military service. She also criticized Republicans for uniting against the bill and said Democrats would continue to fight for provisions that were dropped as compromises, such as Medicare expansion and free universal preschool. .
“This bill honors the Democrats’ promise to American families,” Pelosi said then, referring to the Cut Inflation Act. “After we pass it and the president signs it into law, we will continue to fight for more family-friendly features of the bill that are not included in this legislation. This legislation is historic, it is transformative and it is truly a cause for celebration.
Jeff Stein, Maxine Joselow, Rachel Roubein and John Wagner contributed to this report.