Published: Less than 2 hours ago
Updated: Less than 20 min ago
After 18 months of negotiations and a marathon debate, the Senate of the United States Congress has adopted Joe Biden’s reform package regarding healthcare, energy and climate.
The package is significantly less ambitious than the one the president proposed when he took office, but still includes $740 billion over 10 years in investments mainly for climate measures and lower medicine prices.
Joe Biden praised the decision in a written statement: “It required a lot of compromise, as it almost always does when important things need to be accomplished. The House of Representatives should pass this as soon as possible and I look forward to signing it into law.”
Harris’s vote was decisive
That the Senate passed the legislative package is seen as a great success for Biden and can give the Democrats a tailwind ahead of the midterm elections in November. It passed by the narrowest possible majority, 51-50 in the House where Vice President Kamala Harris has the casting vote.
The reform package now moves on to the House of Representatives, where it is expected to be adopted.
It long looked impossible to pass, after opposition from Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, a state that depends on income from coal mines. But in July, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer managed to stitch together a deal that got Manchin on board.
Major climate investments
The package contains 370 billion dollars in investments in measures intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent until the year 2030. This includes, for example, tax breaks for the purchase of electric cars and subsidized solar panels. Billions in tax credits are also going to some of America’s worst emitters of greenhouse gases to help them transition.
Other parts of the package relate to subsidies for health insurance and reduced costs for drugs, which can be ten times more expensive in the United States than in some other industrialized countries.
Among other things, the reforms are to be financed with a corporate tax of at least 15 percent. Republicans argue it will threaten jobs and fuel inflation.