Heavy price tag for America Inflation at 8.5% and rising.

Seattle WA

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According to the White House, this is what winning looks like. On Tuesday, President Biden signed a sweeping $740 billion tax, climate, and health care bill into law and, in doing so, summarized his party’s message ahead of the midterms. “With this law,” he said, “the American people won and the special interests lost.” A stripped-down and refurbished version of “Build Back Better,” the measure raises taxes on corporations, funds new environmental initiatives, and creates new prescription drug benefits. Biden and congressional allies named it the “Inflation Reduction Act,” while Republicans cite analysis that predicts it will do the opposite, and complain that Biden just hired an army of IRS agents. But in the State Dining Room at the White House, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer didn’t bother with that criticism, predicting instead that the bill Biden was about to sign “will endure as one of the greatest legislative feats in decades.” And to the president, the legislation was the latest example “of an extraordinary story that is being written by this administration and our brave allies in Congress.” For some time now, Democrats have been eager to turn the page. Manchin was the lawmaker who bedeviled Build Back Better from the beginning. Biden had proposed a $1.75 trillion reconciliation framework last fall, and the House passed an even beefier $2.2 trillion package that ended up scaring off centrist Democrats in the Senate. Following the dizzying negotiations over those eye-popping numbers left White House aides exasperated and exhausted. Last October, Louisa Terrell likened the whole process to “a goat rodeo.”