BREAKING: Senate Democrats passed an election-year economic bill package focused on climate, taxes and health care with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris.
Progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., offered amendments to further expand the legislation’s health benefits, and those efforts were defeated. Most votes were forced by Republicans and many were designed to make Democrats look soft on U.S.-Mexico border security and gasoline and energy costs, and like bullies for wanting to strengthen IRS tax law enforcement.
Before debate began Saturday, the bill’s prescription drug price curbs were diluted by the Senate’s nonpartisan parliamentarian. Elizabeth MacDonough, who referees questions about the chamber’s procedures, said a provision should fall that would impose costly penalties on drug makers whose price increases for private insurers exceed inflation.It was the bill’s chief protection for the 180 million people with private health coverage they get through work or purchase themselves.
But the thrust of their pharmaceutical price language remained. That included letting Medicare negotiate what it pays for drugs for its 64 million elderly recipients, penalizing manufacturers for exceeding inflation for pharmaceuticals sold to Medicare and limiting beneficiaries out-of-pocket drug costs to $2,000 annually., the expensive diabetes medication, at $35 monthly. Democrats wanted to extend the $35 cap to private insurers but it ran afoul of Senate rules.
Several Democratic senators joined the GOP-led effort to exclude some firms from the new corporate minimum tax.It was on the energy and environment side that compromise was most evident between progressives and Manchin, a champion of fossil fuels and his state’s coal industry. Clean energy would be fostered with tax credits for buying electric vehicles and manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines. There would be home energy rebates, funds for constructing factories building clean energy technology and money to promote climate-friendly farm practices and reduce pollution in minority communities.Manchin won billions to help power plants lower carbon emissions plus language requiring more government auctions for oil drilling on federal land and waters.
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