(Headline USA) Democrats pushed their election-year spending spree to Senate passage Sunday; the bill is an extravagant expenditure that throws money at “global warming,” and pharmaceutical drug costs.
The estimated $740 billion package heads next to the House, where lawmakers are poised to pass the bill. Cheers broke out as Senate Democrats held united, 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote after an all-night session.
Joe Biden cheered the excessive spending.
Biden, who had his share of long nights during his three decades as a senator, called into the Senate cloakroom during the vote on speakerphone to personally thank the staff for their hard work.
Biden urged the House to pass the bill as soon as possible. Nancy Pelosi said her chamber would “move swiftly to send this bill to the president’s desk.” House votes are expected Friday.
Senators engaged in a round-the-clock marathon of voting that began Saturday and stretched late into Sunday afternoon. Democrats swatted down some three dozen Republican amendments designed to torpedo the legislation. Confronting unanimous GOP opposition, Democratic unity in the 50-50 chamber held, keeping the party on track for a bankrupting victory three months from elections.
As extravagant as the spending was, it could have been worse. This bill is Barely more than one-tenth the size of Biden’s initial 10-year, $3.5 trillion Build Back Better initiative. That plan collapsed after conservative Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., opposed it, saying it was too costly and would fuel inflation.
The bill’s spending is only dwarfed by its length, as it sits at 755-pages.
Republicans said the new measure would undermine an economy that policymakers are struggling to keep from plummeting into recession. They said the bill’s business taxes would hurt job creation and force prices skyward, making it harder for people to cope with the nation’s worst inflation since the 1980s.
“Democrats have already robbed American families once through inflation, and now their solution is to rob American families a second time,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., argued.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
