A new CNN poll finds that 75% of the Democratic voters want an large reconciliation bill, compared to 20% who prefer a scaled-back version.
The bigger bill even wins support from 67% of moderate and conservative Democrats, while independents are split.
The House of Representatives followed the Senate on Tuesday, voting 219-206 along party lines to raise the federal debt ceiling and officially avert a potential default, Axios reports,
Politico: “Revenues jumped 18 percent in the fiscal year that just ended, analysts say — the biggest one-year increase since 1977. That translates into $627 billion more than in 2020, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which estimates that, for the first time, total government revenues topped $4 trillion.”
“Republicans in recent days have ramped up their criticism of a proposal under discussion by Democrats to increase the amount of information financial institutions report to the IRS about bank accounts,” The Hill reports.
“Democrats are considering such a proposal as a way to help pay for their massive social spending package, though they have not finalized details. The plan under discussion would strengthen tax enforcement against the wealthy, Democrats argue.”
Said Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN): “Every year I visit every county in the state of Indiana, 92 of them. And you know, I can’t ever recall anyone saying that they want the IRS to poke into their business more on a day-to-day basis.”
“The House is scheduled to pass a short-term increase in the debt ceiling Tuesday to enable the Treasury to continue borrowing money to pay the bills for two months,” NBC News reports.
“The measure, the product of a last-minute deal struck in the Senate, offers only a temporary reprieve, and it is likely to set up another round of fighting in December.”
“When the Biden administration looked for ways to pay for the president’s expansive social policy bill, it proposed raising revenue by cracking down on $7 trillion in unpaid taxes, mostly from wealthy Americans and businesses,” the New York Times reports.
“To help find those funds, the administration wants banks to give the Internal Revenue Service new details on their customers and provide data for accounts with total annual deposits or withdrawals worth more than $600. That has sparked an uproar among banks and Republican lawmakers, who say giving the I.R.S. such power would be an enormous breach of privacy and government overreach.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warned President Biden on Friday that Republicans won’t help raise the debt ceiling later this year, and stated that a recent speech by Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) had “poisoned the well,” the New York Times reports.
McConnell’s letter is a warning to Democrats, but also gives an early signal to his own members that he won’t give Democrats the same offramp in December.
New York Times: “In a phone call with Mr. Biden, Mr. McConnell, who toiled to corral the votes needed to break his own party’s filibuster against the debt limit increase — and voted himself to do so — said Democrats should not expect such help in the future.”
The federal government’s budget deficit for FY 2021 was nearly $2.8 trillion, according to a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
Punchbowl News: “While still enormous, that’s actually better than FY 2020’s record budget deficit by $362 billion, CBO noted. That’s because revenue was up significantly from the year before — by more than $620 billion — while spending stayed consistent with estimates. This shows just how far the U.S. economy has recovered from its pandemic lows — and how far it still has to go.”
“Democrats will likely drop hundreds of billions of dollars in proposed tax increases on the rich as they scramble to shrink the size of their ‘reconciliation’ package,” Politico reports.
“That’s good news for moderates who are less enthusiastic about raising rates. But it’s potentially terrible news for progressives hoping to stick it to the rich. Many see this as their best chance in years to push through major changes in how wealthy people are taxed — such as a proposal to begin taxing, for the first time, billionaires’ unrealized capital gains.”
“The leaders of the Senate were happy Thursday with their deal to avoid a debt default. They were about the only ones,” Axios reports.
“The Band-Aid does nothing to solve the debt ceiling problem long term for Americans. Democrats fear it only kicks the can down the road to a very busy December. Republicans, meanwhile, are mad their party blinked.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told NBC News his staff tells him that lifting the debt limit by $480 billion should take them to January, not December 3 as the Treasury Department says.
Said Cornyn: “We didn’t want to agree to something where they could just throw it into the omnibus. So keeping it separate is pretty important.”
Meanwhile, a potential hiccup from Politico: “Democrats may need help from at least 10 GOP senators to pass the deal on Thursday. Some Republicans, concerned about letting Democrats off easy, don’t want to allow Democrats to pass the measure with a simple 51-vote majority on the floor.”
“Top Senate Democrats and Republicans said on Thursday that they had struck a deal to allow the debt ceiling to be raised through early December, temporarily staving off the threat of a first-ever default on the national debt after the GOP agreed to temporarily drop its blockade of an increase,” the New York Times reports.
“The agreement would boost the legal debt cap by $480 billion, according to a Senate aide familiar with the details, which the Treasury Department estimates would be enough to allow the government to continue borrowing through Dec. 3. The current limit is $28.4 trillion, since Aug. 1.”
Washington Post: “But it also tees up yet another vicious fight between Democrats and Republicans over the future of federal spending, a battle likely to be all the more fierce in the waning hours of the year — when Congress must confront other challenges including an urgent need to fund the government and prevent a shutdown. An existing agreement to fund federal operations also expires in early December.”
“Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is defending a Biden administration proposal that would require banks to report data to the Internal Revenue Service on transactions over $600, calling the collection of information ‘routine,’ after taking heat for the idea that is widely seen as an unprecedented invasion of privacy,” the New York Post reports.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “wants to make Democrats work hard to lift the debt limit — but not so hard that it threatens a cataclysmic default,” Politico reports.
Said Graham: “I mean, I’m not going to be a complete asshole about it. But I’m going to make them take some tough votes.”
A new Quinnipiac poll finds Americans support a roughly $1 trillion spending bill to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, broadband, and other infrastructure projects, 62% to 34%.
In addition, Americans support a $3.5 trillion spending bill on social programs such as child care, education, family tax breaks, and expanding Medicare for seniors, 54% to 40%.
Jonathan Allen: “Republicans are taking a decidedly Trumpian approach to the possibility of a U.S. default: Only a sucker pays debts.”
“They want Democrats to be those suckers, and they will get their way. The Democrats are ready to shoulder the political hit to pay debts incurred by former President Donald Trump, who slashed revenue and spent profligately, and they are trying unsuccessfully to shame Republicans into walking away from a Senate floor showdown Wednesday.”
“We’re not voting in any way to help raise the debt ceiling. As a group we are all together.”
— Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), quoted by Bloomberg, making clear he will filibuster legislation to lift the debt ceiling tomorrow.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) signaled he is open to a budget reconciliation bill in the ballpark of $1.9 trillion to $2.2 trillion, above the limit he set just last week of $1.5 trillion, The Hill reports.
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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.