At the end of the four-day negotiation marathon, even Republican politicians were annoyed by the procedural tricks with which their fellow party member Bill Hagerty had delayed the passage of the planned law to expand roads, bridges and railways in the US Senate until late Sunday evening. In the end, Hagerty had to admit defeat: 68 of the 100 senators, including 18 Republican, voted to end the official debate on one of the largest infrastructure packages in US history and to call for an early vote. This should take place late Monday evening or Tuesday morning, a majority for the law was considered likely.
With the package, which has a total volume of one trillion dollars (850 billion euros), President Joe Biden wants to modernize the country’s partially ailing infrastructure, expand rail and waterways and internet lines, and establish a nationwide network of charging stations for electric cars. The aim is to slow down climate change, to better protect the USA against cyber attacks from home and abroad and to put the country back on the offensive in the competition with China for the position of the largest economic power in the world. A passing of the law, which provides for new expenditures of 550 billion and the reallocation of already approved funds of another 450 billion dollars, would be a great political success for Biden.
Whether this will happen is still open even after the bipartisan initiative has been passed by the Senate, because afterwards it is important to convince the House of Representatives. Biden’s Democrats have a narrow majority here, but several MPs hesitate because individual points in the Senate bill do not go far enough or go too far for them. Some parliamentarians also consider their own, already passed infrastructure law worth around 715 billion dollars to be better suited to remedying the many shortcomings.
Vice President Harris could give the family and welfare reform package a majority
And then there is another problem that hovers over the entire legislative process: The Democrats are planning a second reform package worth an almost unimaginable $ 3.5 trillion, with which they support families, introduce a kind of parental leave, limit rental costs and the Want to massively reduce the country’s CO₂ emissions. Since it is unlikely that a single Republican Senator will approve this initiative and the Democrats in the Senate have no chance of the necessary 60 votes, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer uses a trick: He wants to use a special budget process to lift the law over parliamentary hurdles, which a majority required by only 51 votes. This is exactly the same as the number of Democratic Senate members, if you count Vice President Kamala Harris’ decisive vote in a vote.
The Republicans, on the other hand, accuse the Democrats of trickery. Senator Hagerty, for example, a follower of former President Donald Trump, justified his opposition to the infrastructure package by saying that Schumer had linked the two projects and outsourced the parts that were not capable of holding a majority in a budget law. Many Republicans, as well as two Democratic senators, are also bothered by the immense costs of the family, social and environmental package, which would in fact continue to drive up US national debt. Hagerty spoke of a “socialist debt bomb”.
Schumer stuck to his plans at the weekend and also defended the extremely tough legislative process. “It took a while, but it was worth it, because now we can hopefully pass both laws very, very soon,” said the New York state senator.
Should the Democrats actually succeed in getting both packages through Congress, then companies and consumers in the United States, including the recent Corona aid package that has already been passed, can expect a good six trillion dollars of economic stimulus. This is a truly powerful impetus even for a huge economy like America. Many Republicans, but also some economists close to the Democrats, already blame the massive increase in government spending on the significantly higher inflation rate in the USA.