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Biden's spending package faces hurdles in Congress
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IANS | 22 Sep, 2021
Democrats are facing hurdles as they try to pass a $3.5 trillion spending package, experts said.
The
package, a sweeping social spending bill that forms the core of US
President Joe Biden's domestic agenda, is a source of contention between
Democrats and Republicans, the Xinhua news agency reported.
At
issue is the bill's size and sources of payment. Republicans want a much
smaller package, while progressive Democrats have threatened to sink
any such legislation. Democrats want to raise taxes on corporations and
higher earners, which Republicans believe would lead to slower economic
growth.
With Congress holding a razor-thin majority, Biden will
need every Democrat to be on board to get enough votes to pass the
legislation.
"Biden's spending bill will pass, but at a lower
level than 3.5 trillion (dollars)," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow
Darrell West told Xinhua.
The final bill may end up significantly
below that figure, although Democrats are likely to keep the major
priorities in the bill, West anticipated.
Last week saw Biden more publicly push the negotiations forward, as lawmakers wrangled over the details of the massive bill.
Biden
has trumpeted proposals to boost taxes on higher-income families and
companies, which he said would pay for the legislation. He also met with
Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema -- both moderate Democrats who
harbor concerns over the bill's massive price tag, but whose votes are
needed to pass the plan.
Manchin and Sinema have warned for
several weeks that they are uncomfortable with the cost of the
3.5-trillion-U.S.-dollar package. That bill "will not have my vote,"
Manchin told CNN recently.
In a recent CNN interview, progressive
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said many progressive caucus
members would not vote for Manchin's infrastructure bill "unless it is
tied together" with Biden's much larger spending bill.
In an
opinion piece in the New York Times, Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard economics
professor and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers,
argued that "there's good reason to doubt" the White House claims that
the plan will be paid for with higher taxes on corporations and the very
wealthy.
Budget experts, such as Maya MacGuineas, president of
the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, were skeptical that the
government can raise enough tax revenue from the wealthy to finance
Biden's agenda.
Moreover, higher taxes "distort incentives and
impede economic growth," Mankiw contended, citing this as another worry
over the massive spending package Biden wants to pass.
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Customs Exchange Rates |
Currency |
Import |
Export |
US Dollar
|
66.20
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64.50 |
UK Pound
|
87.50
|
84.65 |
Euro
|
78.25
|
75.65 |
Japanese
Yen |
58.85 |
56.85 |
As on 13 Aug, 2022 |
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Daily Poll |
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