House is set to vote on Biden’s Build Back Better and infrastructure bills at 8am on Friday

The U.S. House of Representatives will convene at 8am Friday in a make of break session for President Biden’s massive domestic policy agenda, as Democrats hope they can advance the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act and the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill already passed in the Senate in August.

But it comes after they saw a Thursday deadline come and go, the latest in a series of missed targets.  

Biden lobbied Democrats in the House on Thursday night to vote ‘yes’ on his social policy and climate-change bill, as the party tries to recover from sobering state election losses.    

A White House official said Biden was calling various House members and urging them to vote yes.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi worked furiously into the night at the Capitol Thursday and kept the House late to shore up votes. 

‘We’re going to pass both bills,’ Pelosi insisted at a midday press briefing.

Her strategy now seems focused on passing the most robust bill possible in the lower chamber and then leaving the Senate to adjust or strip out the portions its members won’t agree to. The House Rules Committee met late Thursday to prepare the bill for floor votes.

Biden left for Europe last week for a meeting of G20 leaders and a U.N. climate conference without a deal on the legislation. 

An affirmative vote before the conclusion of the climate conference in Glasgow on November 12 would bolster the credibility of Biden’s pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. 

With a 221-213 majority in the House of Representatives and a united Republican opposition, Democrats need near unanimity to pass legislation.

Half the size of Biden’s initial $3.5 trillion package, the now sprawling 2,135-page bill has won over most of the progressive Democratic lawmakers, even though it is smaller than they wanted. But the chamber’s more centrist and fiscally conservative Democrats continued to mount objections.

Overall the package remains more far-reaching than any other in decades. Republicans are fully opposed to Biden’s bill.

The big package would provide large numbers of Americans with assistance to pay for health care, raising children and caring for elderly people at home.

There would be lower prescription drug costs, limiting the price of insulin to $35 a dose, and Medicare for the first time would be able to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for prices of some other drugs, a long-sought Democratic priority.

Medicare would have a new hearing aid benefit for older Americans, and those with Medicare Part D would see their out-of-pocket prescription drug costs capped at $2,000.

The package would provide some $555 billion in tax breaks encouraging cleaner energy and electric vehicles, the nation’s largest commitment to tackling climate change.

With a flurry of late adjustments, the Democrats added key provisions in recent days – adding back a new paid family leave program, work permits for immigrants and changes to state and local tax deductions.

Much of package’s cost would be covered with higher taxes on wealthier Americans, those earning more than $400,000 a year, and a 5% surtax would be added on those making over $10 million annually. Large corporations would face a new 15% minimum tax in an effort to stop big businesses from claiming so many deductions that they end up paying zero in taxes.

Democrats have been working to resolve their differences, particularly with holdout Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who forced cutbacks to Biden’s bill but championed the slimmer infrastructure package that had stalled amid deliberations.

Democrats are reeling from a disappointing loss in Virginia this week when a Republican won the governor’s office in a state Biden won handily in 2020. 

The party is eager to show it can move forward on the president’s agenda, and fend off Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections when control of the House and Senate will be on the line.

The nonpartisan U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation issued a report scoring the ‘Build Back Better’ legislation’s tax revenue provisions at $1.48 trillion over the next decade.  

Pelosi and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal said the committee’s analysis did not account for additional revenue from provisions intended to enhance the Internal Revenue Service’s tax collection and to lower the cost of prescription drugs for the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly.

‘It’s an objective view that it is solidly paid for,’ Pelosi told reporters after a meeting of House Democrats on the legislation.

Moody’s Analytics analysts said on Thursday the bills would be fully paid for and add jobs, but that implementing them would take ‘deft governance.’

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen issued a statement saying the legislation would raise more than $2 trillion, enough to pay for the bill and ‘reduce deficits over the long term.’ 

The tax committee assesses only the tax provisions in legislation. The Congressional Budget Office, another nonpartisan arm of Congress, is expected to provide revenue scores for the IRS and drug-pricing provisions, Democrats said. But a final CBO report is not expected this week.

In a meeting with fellow Democrats on Thursday morning, Pelosi expressed hope for action on both bills this week, a source familiar with her remarks said.

If passed by the House, the social policy legislation would move to the Senate, also narrowly controlled by Democrats, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wants to enact it before the November 25 Thanksgiving holiday.

The legislation would raise $640 billion from tax increases on high-income individuals and $814 billion from corporate and international tax reforms from 2022 to 2031, the Joint Committee on Taxation said.

Congress faces another pair of critical deadlines in less than a month: Lawmakers set a December 3 deadline to avoid a potentially economically devastating default on the federal government’s debt, as well as to avert a politically embarrassing government shutdown.