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      Senate’s 50-50 split lets Manchin and Sinema revel in outsize influence

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      DemocratsSenate’s 50-50 split lets Manchin and Sinema revel in outsize influence Joe Biden, whose Build Back Better bill has been slashed by the two holdouts, said with ‘50 Democrats, every one is a president’David Smith in Washington@smithinamericaFri 29 Oct 2021 14.46 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 Oct 2021 15.11 EDTJoe Biden recently summed up his problems getting things done.In an America where the US Senate is split 50-50, then effectively any single senator can hold a veto over the president’s entire agenda. “Look,” laughed Biden at a CNN town hall, “you have 50 Democrats, every one is a president. Every single one. So, you got to work things out.”Joe Manchin single-handedly denied US families paid leave. That’s just cruel | Jill FilipovicRead moreIt explains why the most powerful man in the world is currently struggling to get his way in Washington – and why two members of his own party, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, are standing in his way.Such is the distribution of power that American presidents can only impose their will up to a point if Congress refuses to yield. While the White House can do much with executive orders and actions, major legislation must gain a majority of votes in the House of Representatives and Senate.Democrats do currently control both chambers – but only just. The Senate is evenly divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, meaning that Vice-President Kamala Harris must cast the tie-breaking vote. That means all 50 Democratic senators must be on board in the face of united Republican opposition – an increasingly safe (and bleak) assumption in polarised era.By contrast, President Franklin Roosevelt’s Democrats reached 59 seats in the then 96-member Senate, while President Lyndon Johnson’s Democrats had 68 in what by then was a 100-seat chamber. Biden is trying to match the scale of both men’s ambition with no room for error.This is why his agenda – huge investments in infrastructure and expanding the social safety net – depends on the blessing of Manchin and Sinema in what might seem to the watching world as a case of the tail wagging the dog.Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont defeated by Biden in last year’s Democratic primary, tweeted earlier this month: “2 senators cannot be allowed to defeat what 48 senators and 210 House members want.”But the cold reality is that, after months of painful wrangling and concessions, Manchin and Sinema have almost single-handedly narrowed the scale and scope of Biden’s grand vision.This week it emerged that Build Back Better plan would be halved from $3.5tn to $1.75tn, axing plans for paid family leave, lower prescription drug pricing and free community college. Sanders’s dream of including dental and vision care also failed to make the cut.Biden insists that the framework still represents the biggest ever investment in climate change and the greatest improvement to the nation’s healthcare system in more than a decade.He said at the White House on Friday: “No one got everything they wanted, including me, but that’s what compromise is. That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on. I’ve long said compromise and consensus are the only way to get big things done in a democracy, important things for the country.”But what makes it especially galling for many is that opinion polls show the eliminated measures are highly popular. Manchin and Sinema have ensured that the US is destined to remain one of seven countries – along with the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tonga – without paid leave for new mothers, according to UCLA’s World Policy Analysis Center.Biden met late on Tuesday evening with both senators at the White House. Countless newspaper columns and hours of airtime have been expended trying to understand the motives of the two holdouts, who can effectively decide whether Democrats keep their campaign promises – with huge implications for next year’s midterm elections.Manchin is not so mysterious. He hails from coal-rich West Virginia, a conservative state that Donald Trump won twice in a landslide, and once ran a campaign ad in which he shot a rifle at a legislative bill. He owns about $1m in shares in his son’s coal brokerage company and has raised campaign funds from oil and gas interests.Critics accuse him of putting personal and local concerns ahead of his party, the nation and the world. The USA Today newspaper wrote in an editorial: “It’s no stretch to conclude that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is risking the planet’s future to protect a dwindling pool of 14,000 coal mining jobs in his home state of West Virginia.”Sinema, however, has been described as enigmatic, sphinx-like and whimsical. In 2018 she became Arizona’s first Democratic senator for more than two decades and, despite progressive credentials and a flair for fashion statements, has taken conservative positions on several issues.She also provokes the left with stunts such as a thumbs-down gesture on the Senate floor when she voted against raising the federal minimum wage and, on Thursday, a parody of the TV comedy Ted Lasso with the Republican senator Mitt Romney. Perhaps tellingly, Sinema raised $1.1m in campaign funds in the last quarter with significant donations from the pharmaceutical and financial industries.In a divided Senate, where Republicans are consumed by Trump’s election lies, this duo holds the fate of Biden’s presidency in their hands. The haggling could go on for weeks more, granting Manchin and Sinema continued outsized influence and guaranteeing that their every move and word will be avidly scrutinised.Joe Lockhart, a former White House press secretary, tweeted: “My dream? Democrats pick up a few more Senate seats in 2022 and when Joe Manchin holds a press conference to declare what he can live with and what he can’t, nobody shows up.”TopicsDemocratsUS politicsUS SenateJoe BidenUS domestic policyUS CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Biden’s agenda remains unrealized as Democrats fail to close deal again

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      US politicsBiden’s agenda remains unrealized as Democrats fail to close deal againPelosi forced to postpone infrastructure vote on Thursday ahead of Biden’s meeting with world leaders in Rome Lauren Gambino in Washington@laurenegambinoFri 29 Oct 2021 13.53 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 Oct 2021 14.31 EDTJoe Biden’s nearly $3tn domestic agenda remains unrealized after an 11th-hour push to rally Democrats around a pared-down package that he framed as historic, failed to close the deal in time for his meeting with world leaders in Rome at the G20 summit.Capitol attack panel faces pivotal moment as Trump allies stonewallRead moreBut after a dramatic Thursday of bold promises and dashed hopes, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to postpone a vote on a $1tn infrastructure bill for a second time in a month, as progressives demanded more assurances that a compromise $1.75tn social policy plan would also pass.It was a setback – though perhaps only a temporary one – for Democratic leaders, who had hoped to hand the president a legislative victory that he could tout during his six-day trip to Europe for a pair of international economic and climate summits.The delay underscored the depth of mistrust among Democrats – between the House and Senate, progressives and centrists, leadership and members – after a lengthy negotiating process yielded a plan that was about half the size of Biden’s initial vision.Biden’s proposal includes substantial investments in childcare, education and health care as well as major initiatives to address climate change that, if enacted, would be the largest action ever taken by the US Congress. Revenue would come from tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy.But in concessions to centrists like the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin and Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, paid family leave, free college tuition and efforts to lower prescription drug prices were stripped from the latest iteration of the plan. Progressives were left disappointed by the cuts but their desire to pass the legislation ultimately held little leverage to force major changes.In a speech before departing for Europe, Biden acknowledged the bill fell short of his legislative ambitions, but reflected the limits of what was politically possible given Democrats’ narrow governing majorities and unified Republican opposition.“No one got everything they wanted, including me,” he said. “But that’s what compromise is.”As lawmakers and activists digested the newly released details of the plan, there seems to be a growing consensus among progressives that, while insufficient, the plan makes critical investments in many of their top priorities, especially in the field of tackling the climate crisis.“The newly announced Build Back Better Act can be a turning point in America’s fight against the climate crisis – but only if we pass it,” leaders of the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action wrote in a memo on Friday.Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University, said unified control of the White House and Congress can, perhaps paradoxically, make governing harder. Because these moments are rare and often fleeting, there is a rush by the president and his party to pursue an ambitious, legacy-defining agenda, he said.“But the challenges of legislating don’t go away,” Zelizer said. “And in some ways, the tensions within the party are exacerbated by the stakes being so high.”Some have argued that scaling back key programs could make it harder for Americans to feel the impact of the new benefits, despite the substantial size of the legislation. That could make it difficult for Biden, whose approval ratings have slid in recent weeks, to sell the plan he told House Democrats would determine the fate of his presidency and their political futures.TopicsUS politicsJoe BidenDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateNancy PelosiRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver

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      Cop26Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver President faces challenges to reassert US credibility after Trump but critics say Biden’s actions have yet to match his wordsOliver Milman@olliemilmanFri 29 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 Oct 2021 04.17 EDTWith no major climate legislation firmly in hand and international allies still smarting after four bruising years of Donald Trump, Joe Biden faces a major challenge to reassert American credibility as he heads to crucial UN climate talks in Scotland.Is Joe Biden about to show up to Cop26 empty-handed? | Kate AronoffRead moreThe US president, who has vowed to tackle a climate crisis he has described as an “existential threat” to civilization, will be welcomed to the Cop26 talks with a sense of relief following the decisions of his predecessor, who pulled his country out of the landmark Paris climate agreement and derided climate science as “bullshit”.But Biden, who departed to Europe on Thursday and arrived in Rome on Friday morning for a G20 summit, will head to Glasgow with his domestic climate agenda whittled away by a recalcitrant Congress and a barrage of criticism from climate activists who claim Biden’s actions have yet to match his words.This disconnect has perturbed delegates keen to see a reliable American partner emerge from the Trump era, amid increasingly dire warnings from scientists that “irreversible” heatwaves, floods, crop failures and other effects are being locked in by governments’ sluggish response to global heating.“The US is still the world’s largest economy, other nations pay attention to it, and we’ve never had a president more committed to climate action,” said Alice Hill, who was a climate adviser to Barack Obama. “But there is skepticism being expressed by other countries. They saw our dramatic flip from Obama to Trump and the worry is we will flip again. A lack of consistency is the issue.”Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat who was a key architect of the Paris agreement, said that Biden had put climate “at the top of his agenda” and that US diplomacy has helped eke some progress from countries such as Saudi Arabia, South Africa and India.But she added the US had a “historical climate credibility problem” and that other leaders fret about its domestic political dysfunction and long-term commitment.“We do worry, because it has happened before and could happen again,” she said. “The US is the world’s largest historical emitter and never passed a significant climate bill. [Biden] has still got a long way to go to make up for Trump’s lost years.”In a show of soft American power, Biden is bringing a dozen of his cabinet members to Glasgow, where delegates from nearly 200 countries will wrangle over an agreement aimed at avoiding a disastrous 1.5C of global heating, a key objective of the Paris deal. But perhaps the most consequential figure to the American effort, rivaling the president himself, is remaining at home – the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin.Manchin, a centrist Democrat, looms large at the talks having derailed the centerpiece of a landmark reconciliation bill that would slash US emissions. The White House still hopes the bill, which would be the first major climate legislation ever passed in the US, will help convince other leaders to also increase their efforts in Glasgow to head off climate breakdown.Cop26 delegates have become acutely aware of how Biden needs the vote of Manchin, who has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, to pass his agenda and help determine the future livability of places far from the West Virginia senator’s home state.“Bangladeshis probably know more about American politics than the average American does, people know about Joe Manchin,” said Saleemul Haq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, based in Bangladesh, which faces looming devastation from flooding. “Joe Manchin is in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry and is trying to cut everything the coal lobby doesn’t want.“Biden’s agenda is stuck in Congress with his own senators and he hasn’t delivered anything near what the US should deliver. It’s just words. His actions are woefully inadequate.”Biden has admitted that “the prestige of the United States is on the line” over the reconciliation bill, according to Democrats who met with the president, but publicly he has remained upbeat. When John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, said that the failure to secure the legislation would be like “President Trump pulling out of the Paris agreement, again”, Biden gently rebuked him, saying that Kerry had indulged in “hyperbole”.“In every single day of this administration we’ve been driving forward a whole of government approach that sets us up to go into this climate conference with an incredible deal of momentum,” said an administration official.The White House has pointed to the rejoining of the Paris accords, the resurrection of several environmental rules axed by Trump and what it is calling the “largest effort to combat climate change in American history” with the reconciliation bill, which is still set to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars in support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles.Progressives argue, however, that the Biden administration has done little to curb the fossil fuel industry, most notably in allowing two controversial oil projects, the Dakota Access pipeline and the Line 3 pipeline, to proceed. Just a week after the end of Cop26, the administration will auction off 80m acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, an area larger than the UK.“The president is doing so much, but he is simply not doing everything he can to deliver climate justice and save lives – and we need him to now,” said Cori Bush, a progressive Democratic congresswoman who has visited the site of the Line 3 construction in Minnesota.Protests have erupted in front of the White House over this record, with several young climate activists currently staging a hunger strike to demand Biden does more.“President Biden started very strongly by rejoining the Paris agreement but it’s been a frustrating past few months, things have slowed down,” said Jade Begay, a climate activist who is part of a White House advisory council. “Joe Manchin is holding hostage our survival on planet Earth for his own political career and people are really questioning if Biden will stick to his promises.”05:18The US has also declined to set an end date for the coal sector, unlike countries such as the UK and Germany. This position runs contrary to a key objective of the British government as Cop26 hosts, with Alok Sharma, the conference’s president, pledging the talks will help “consign coal to history”.Asked by the Guardian about the US’s stance on coal, Sharma said progress on the issue has been slow until now but “we want to see what is going to be possible” at the Glasgow summit. “I welcome the fact we now have an administration in the US that is very focused on taking climate action and supporting the international effort,” he said.Sharma added: “It is ultimately on world leaders to deliver. It is world leaders who signed up to the Paris agreement and … if I can put it like this, it is on them to collectively deliver at Cop.”TopicsCop26Joe BidenClimate crisisUS politicsUS foreign policyJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden urges Democrats to unite around ‘historic’ $1.75tn investment package

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      Joe BidenBiden urges Democrats to unite around ‘historic’ $1.75tn investment package President’s visit to Capitol Hill prompts flurry of activity as Pelosi ramps up pressure on progressives to accept Biden’s frameworkLauren Gambino in Washington@laurenegambinoThu 28 Oct 2021 15.48 EDTFirst published on Thu 28 Oct 2021 08.11 EDTJoe Biden on Thursday unveiled a “historic economic framework” that he said would make the US more competitive and resilient, touting the $1.75tn plan to expand the nation’s social safety net and confront the climate crisis as a victory for consensus and compromise even as the path forward remained uncertain.‘We’re on the path to get this done’: Pelosi pushes infrastructure vote as progressives balk – liveRead moreThe president, who delayed his departure to Europe to finalize the proposal, cast the emerging deal as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restore American leadership and show the world that democracies can still deliver in the 21st century.His remarks at the White House followed a visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday morning, where he pleaded with House Democrats to unite behind the agreement, saying that his presidency – and their political futures – depended on the passage of his domestic agenda.“I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week,” he said, according to a source familiar with his private remarks to the caucus.The visit set in motion a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill, as Democratic leaders, eager to deliver Biden a legislative victory, ramped up pressure on progressives to accept the “framework” as a done deal, paving the way for them to join moderates in passing a related $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill. With Republicans mostly aligned against the plan, Pelosi only has a handful of votes to spare.“When the president gets off that plane, we want him to have a vote of confidence from this Congress,” she told her fractious caucus on Thursday morning. “In order for us to have success, we must succeed today.”Twice during the course of the hour-long meeting, Democratic lawmakers rose to their feed and began to chant: “Vote, vote, vote.” But their enthusiasm was quickly tempered as her caucus’s most liberal members dug in.Leaving the meeting on Thursday, the Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the House Progressive Caucus, said the deal was a sign of “tremendous momentum” but that her position remained unchanged: the bills must move in tandem.“I feel a bit bamboozled because this was not what I thought was coming today,” said congresswoman Cori Bush, a progressive from Missouri. Speaking personally about working a low-wage job and struggling to afford housing and childcare, Bush said she wasn’t ready to give up on fighting for policies that would lift her constituents from similar circumstances.Putting it more bluntly, congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, said she was a “hell no” on the infrastructure bill if there was not a simultaneous vote on the larger spending plan.During a press conference, Pelosi did not commit to holding the vote on Thursday, saying only that the party was “on a path to get this all done”. Working franticly to advance the legislation, the framework was swiftly translated into a 1,684-page bill released shortly before a House rules committee hearing on the measure.“This is not the end of the process,” said congressman Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts and the chair of the committee, affirming multiple times during the hearing that the social policy package would not be ready for a vote on Thursday. “This bill will continue to be perfected.”Complicating negotiations for Democratic leaders was a lack of certainty from the key holdouts, Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Both sounded hopeful that a deal was within reach, but stopped short of offering their firm support.“After months of productive, good-faith negotiations with Biden and the White House, we have made significant progress on the proposed budget reconciliation package,” Sinema said, adding: “I look forward to getting this done.”Manchin also did not commit to supporting the legislation he played a significant role in shaping. Asked whether he would vote for the plan, he said only that its fate was presently “in the hands of the House”.After months of prolonged negotiations, the proposed framework is far smaller in size and scope than the $3.5tn package Biden initially envisioned. Even so, the president claimed a pre-emptive legislative achievement on par with those enacted by Franklin D Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.“Any single element of this framework would be viewed as a fundamental change in America. Taken together they’re truly consequential,” Biden said during remarks from the East Room at the White House, pointing to new spending on childcare and climate mitigation.“If we make these investments, we will own the future,” he added.The package would make substantial new investments in childcare and caregiving as well as transitioning the US economy away from fossil fuels. According to the White House, the framework would put the US on track to meet the president’s pledge to slash planet-warming emissions by 2030.Among the other provisions in the bill are free preschool for every three- and four-year-old, expanded health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and what the White House is calling the largest “effort to combat climate change in American history”.Stripped from the package were plans to provide 12 weeks of federal paid family leave and two years of free community college; ambitious climate initiatives and efforts to lower prescription drug prices. A proposal to expand Medicare to cover vision, dental and hearing was pared back to just hearing.Democrats spent the last several weeks haggling over plans to pay for their agenda, amid opposition from both Manchin and Sinema to various revenue-raising proposals. On Wednesday, a novel plan to tax billionaires’ assets was tossed aside after Manchin said the plan carried “the connotation that we’re targeting different people”.To offset their spending, Democrats said they would raise an estimated $2tn by increasing taxes on corporations and the highest earning Americans, and by rolling back some of the Trump administration’s tax cuts passed in 2017. It honors Biden’s campaign pledge that he would not raise taxes on Americans earning less than $400,000 a year, according to the White House.After weeks of frenetic negotiations, Democrats were scrambling to cobble together a deal that the president could tout when he travels to Rome, the Vatican, and then to the United Nations climate conference, known as Cop26, in Glasgow, Scotland, where he hopes to point to the accord as evidence of the US’s commitment to confronting the climate crisis.“We are at an inflection point,” Biden told House lawmakers. “The rest of the world wonders whether we can function.”Internal disputes over the bill delayed its passage for weeks, as Democrats blew past self-imposed deadlines in an effort to find a compromise that could satisfy the broad ideological expanse of their party.The result is a bill that reflected the limits of their governing coalition, Biden said, indicating that this was the best deal Democrats could hope to achieve with paper-thin majorities and unified Republican opposition.“No one got everything they wanted, including me,” he said. “But that’s what compromise is. That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on.”The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the powerful budget committee, called the framework a “major step forward” but warned that there were also “major gaps” in the legislation. He cited the lack of paid family and medical leave for workers and the failure to expand Medicare benefits to include dental and vision as well as herding, a major priority for the senator.Without all 50 senators, the legislation will not pass.TopicsJoe BidenUS CongressUS politicsDemocratsJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More

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      $555bn in climate action but no new tax on billionaires: what’s in Biden’s plan?

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      Joe Biden$555bn in climate action but no new tax on billionaires: what’s in Biden’s plan?President’s $1.75tn spending framework includes investments in childcare and healthcare, but 12 weeks of paid family leave is out Lauren ArataniThu 28 Oct 2021 12.15 EDTLast modified on Thu 28 Oct 2021 12.39 EDTJoe Biden on Thursday released the framework of a $1.75tn social and climate spending proposal after weeks of fraught negotiations with congressional Democrats.Biden makes $1.75tn pitch: ‘My presidency will be determined by what happens next’ – liveRead moreThe framework includes investments in childcare, climate change mitigation and an expansion of healthcare, but it is a significantly pared-down version of the original $3.5tn agenda Biden had proposed.In a statement, the White House said the president is confident this framework of the bill would be able to pass the House and Senate, although it appears negotiations on the proposal’s specific details will continue.Here is what we know so far:What’s in the bill?The bill includes substantial investment in young children, specifically funding for childcare and early childhood education. Under the proposal, most American families will save more than half of their spending on childcare, with bolstered benefits to working and low-income parents. It also includes universal pre-school for children aged three and four.A hallmark of the proposal’s climate mitigation plan is $555bn to reduce climate pollution and invest in clean energy. The proposal includes consumer rebates for Americans who invest in renewable energy, for example installing rooftop solar panels or buying an electric vehicle.The bill also includes incentives to expand renewable energy in the domestic supply chain, an accelerator program that will fund sustainability projects and funding for restoration and conservation efforts.The framework includes some provisions to bolster healthcare, including reducing healthcare premiums and tax credits to people who have been locked out of Medicaid because their state refused to expand Medicaid access. It will also include investments in affordable housing and an extension of the child tax credit.What was taken out?A few provisions that some Democrats were heavily advocating for were left out of the framework.Most notably, the proposal does not include 12 weeks of paid family leave. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia was the primary holdout for the provision. Manchin has indicated that he believes a reconciliation bill – which would require only the support of Democrats in the Senate – is “not the place” for “a major policy”.Significant expansions to healthcare were cut out of the framework, including provisions to have Medicaid cover dental and vision costs, a plan to expand Medicaid to Americans in states that have refused to expand it themselves under the Affordable Care Act, and a proposal to empower Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.Biden’s plan for free tuition at community colleges was also left out.The framework notably does not include the “billionaire tax” that was floated by some Democrats on Wednesday before it was swiftly killed by centrist holdouts.The billionaire tax would have seen a complete shift in the way Americans worth more than $1bn would pay taxes, targeting the billions of dollars in shares they own in their companies. Hours after the proposal was unveiled, Manchin said he would not support such a provision.How are Democrats planning to pay for it?Biden estimates the framework will cost about $1.75tn, and the White House says the bill will be funded “by asking more from the very largest corporations and the wealthiest Americans”.A central provision in the bill’s payment plan is shifting the corporate tax rate to 15% for corporations with more than $1bn in profits. While the current corporate tax rate is 21%, Democrats have agreed that loopholes allowed corporations to report lower profits to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) while boasting lofty profits to shareholders. The next tax rate will apply to the profit that is reported to shareholders.The bill also includes a surtax on the 0.02% wealthiest Americans and investments in IRS auditing enforcements.What’s next?The framework released by Biden on Thursday represents a broad outline of what will end up in the final bill. Congressional Democrats will need to get to work at drafting the actual legislation if everyone, particularly the party’s most progressive and conservative members, can agree on the basic framework. When that will happen will depend on how quickly everyone says they are on board.TopicsJoe BidenUS domestic policyUS CongressUS politicsJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden plan pledges ‘largest effort to combat climate change in US history’

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      Joe BidenBiden plan pledges ‘largest effort to combat climate change in US history’Hundreds of billions to be given to clean energy, electric vehicles and flood defenses, officials say – but some key parts left out Oliver Milman in New York@olliemilmanThu 28 Oct 2021 11.41 EDTLast modified on Thu 28 Oct 2021 15.05 EDTThe Biden administration has said a vast spending bill is set to result in the “largest effort to combat climate change in American history”, with hundreds of billions of dollars set to be funneled into supporting clean energy, electric vehicles and new defenses against extreme weather events. But some key parts of Joe Biden’s original plan were left out.Biden makes $1.75tn pitch: ‘My presidency will be determined by what happens next’ – liveRead moreFollowing negotiations with Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, two centrist Democratic senators who have opposed large portions of the original Build Back Better bill, the White House said it was confident a reduced version of the legislation will be able to pass both houses of Congress and will “set the United States on course to meet its climate goals”.This proposed framework includes $555bn in incentives, investments and tax credits aimed at bolstering the deployment of renewable energy such as solar and wind, as well as a tax break that will deliver up to $12,500 to people who buy an electric car. The bill will help deploy new electric buses and trucks, build community resilience to disastrous wildfires and floods and employ 300,000 people in a new “civilian climate corps”.In all, the White House said the legislation will cut planet-heating emissions by 1bn tons by 2030 and bring the US significantly closer to its goal of slashing carbon pollution in half this decade.At a press conference held on Thursday, Biden said the bill will represent “the most significant investment to address the climate crisis ever” and “will truly transform this nation”.“We are going to get off the sidelines of manufacturing solar panels and wind farms,” the president said, adding that the package will help double the number of electric cars on US roads within three years and provide 500,000 new charging stations for the vehicles. “We are once again going to be the innovators. It’s a big deal.”“The weather is not going to get better, it’s going to get a heck of a lot worse,” Biden continued. “It’s a blinking code red for America and the world.”The legislation has been significantly reduced following objections raised by Manchin and Sinema over its scope – Biden needs every Senate Democrat to vote for the bill to overcome unified Republican opposition to it – but the remaining framework still represents the first, and largest, major attempt by the US to tackle the unfolding climate crisis.“It’s a historic day for people and the planet,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “Congress must swiftly pass the Build Back Better Act and send it to President Biden to sign into law.”On Thursday, Biden will travel to Europe for crucial UN climate talks to be held in Scotland. The US president has said it would be “very, very positive” for the reconciliation bill to pass before the Cop26 summit, in order to bolster American credibility and help convince other countries to do more to address the catastrophic wildfires, floods and heatwaves increasingly being unleashed by global heating.This effort has been repeatedly stymied by the objections of Manchin, a West Virginia senator with deep ties to the coal industry who managed to strike out of the bill a system that would have phased out fossil fuels from America’s electricity grid. This plan was responsible for a third of the emissions cuts in the original version of the legislation, according to analysts.The new framework does not include fees paid by oil and gas producers when they emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Manchin was also opposed to this fee in the original bill and rejected a proposal to include a tax or price on carbon emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency is, however, poised to regulate methane emissions through its existing powers.These omissions mean that the legislation’s framework represents a historic investment in clean energy but doesn’t include any mechanisms to reduce fossil fuel usage or even cut subsidies flowing to the oil, coal and gas companies that have caused the climate crisis.“Given the prime opportunity to cancel billions of dollars in domestic subsidies for oil and gas polluters, the president and congressional leadership have rolled over,” said Mitch Jones, policy director of Food and Water Watch. “A climate plan that fails to directly confront the oil and gas industry cannot possibly be considered meaningful.”Climate experts have, however, pointed out the bill, if passed, would represent a major step forward in acting on the climate crisis, while making clear that further emissions cuts will be needed to avoid the US, and the world, spiraling into a barely livable climatic state.Leah Stokes, a climate policy expert at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said it would be “great news” if the legislation passes because “the climate math is brutal”.“Even if we are lucky enough to get this bill over the finish line, we need more next year,” she tweeted. “The climate clock is ticking.”TopicsJoe BidenClimate crisisUS domestic policyUS CongressJoe ManchinUS politicsnewsReuse this content More