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As expected, Biden asks Congress to pass legislation expanding Medicare by lowering the eligibility age from 65 to 60, and adding coverage for vision, dental, and hearing as well as allowing the program to negotiate drug prices. Biden doesn’t budget for those changes, but leaves that up to Congress. One of the largest increases in his discretionary budget is a 23% increase for the Department of Health and Human Services, including $8.7 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The administration expects to economy to grow at slightly more than 5% for the remainder of this year with a rebound from the pandemic, and growth next year of 4.3%—that would be faster rate of growth than the nation has experienced in two decades. That depends a lot on what happens with his infrastructure plans, which are now … uncertain.
As we head in to the third month of infrastructure week, Biden has given Republicans yet another deadline: a meeting next week. But he told reporters on Thursday that he’d informed Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the West Virginia Republican who has taken the lead role in whatever it is that they’re doing, that “we have to finish this really soon.”
The Senate is out until June 7, with no real work starting until the next day. The House is out until the week of June 14. If Biden is still in this process with the Senate Republicans, Democratic leadership is likely to wait until that process plays out before starting in on budget reconciliation, the inevitable outcome of this process. Republicans aren’t going to meet Biden with an acceptable plan, one that would garner enough Democratic support in the House to pass.
The only two ways in Biden’s vision passes even remotely intact will be through either budget reconciliation, which is exempt from the filibuster, or if Senate Democrats nuke the filibuster. That’s it. And there are still two Democrats standing in the way: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
At the same time, while Manchin and Sinema are enabling the Republicans, Senate Democrats are enabling them. It might just be time for those who want to end the filibuster to start pushing the point. For example, on Friday when nine Republicans were AWOL (along with Sinema), and the bill failed even when it got majority support.
There’s a thing Democrats could do to force the issue when that happened again. When a cloture bill “fails” with majority of support, a Democrat could stand up and say, “I appeal the ruling of the chair,” and force a vote on the filibuster. At least it might make, a David Waldman says, a rule: “Yes, you actually at least have to stay here and vote” to filibuster.
It might just be time for pro-reform Democrats to start making some more noise about it.
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