The yeas are 50, the nays are 50, the Senate being equally divided, the vice
president votes in the affirmative and the bill as amended is passed.
>> [APPLAUSE] >> They actually did it.
The democrats did it and by it, I mean,
literally anything I've been begging them to, and they did.
The inflation reduction act has passed the Senate,
not a single Republicans supported it.
Why would they?
It does some good things and they're not into that, but it did pass.
And in this video, we're going to talk about some of the good and
some of the bad.
We're gonna start off though acknowledging in advance of all of the good stuff
that's still in the bill.
And some of it, by the way,
didn't make it through the vote-a-rama as we predicted last week that it wouldn't.
That initially build back better was supposed to be like $3.5 trillion and
would have included things like paid family leave,
funding for universal preschool, as well as expanding the child tax credit.
All incredibly significant things that could have done a lot of good,
both to help people who are struggling economically,
coming out of the covid crisis or in the area of family leave.
Just catching us up to the rest of the developed world.
But we didn't have that, we didn't have the $3.5 trillion.
We certainly didn't have the more than $3.5 trillion that
a hypothetical President Sanders would have put forward.
What we ended up getting was hundreds of billions, which is good and
we'll dive into what that actually amounts to in practice.
But we knew going to the weekend that there was going to be some
attempts to water it down.
We'll just spotlight a couple of successful attempts a little bit later on.
For now though, know that Senate Republicans offer dozens of amendments
trying to strip out significant portions of the bill.
For instance, they don't want the IRS to get more funding.
GI wonder whose interest they're serving when they try to stop the IRS from doing
audits.
Anyway, eliminating school mandates having to do with COVID and all that.
And so generally trying to make the bill as weak, and
as small and pathetic as possible because it spends money to help people, and
that's not what they're in DC for.
They did that, Bernie Sanders also put forward amendments.
He had amendments on prescription drug negotiations,
as well as reinstalling the enhanced child tax credit.
He also, by the way, tried to add an amendment that would have covered
vision and dental care for seniors.
And none of these unfortunately worked.
And he's been very critical of this bill because it's so watered down.
He did end up voting for it, and I just want to quickly say that
I saw a Twitter thread of some Biden loving centrists so
thrilled that Bernie Sanders failed in his amendments to try to get vision and
dental coverage- >> They're so mad.
>> America's seniors.
They were so delighted to mock him, that he failed to get
some 70-year-olds teeth fixed- >> Yeah.
>> Just disgusting.
There's a lot of disgusting new around.
>> It's amazing that all he wants to do is help seniors chew.
And given the average age of the Senate,
you'd think that would be something they would understand.
But of course, they've got great health care,
they're not [LAUGH] relying on medicare.
>> That's true. >> They've got amazing dental work.
Obviously, I think Nancy Pelosi and even Joe Biden,
honestly, let's be real, proves that every single day.
A day without dentures for the Senate, let's do it people and
see if we can get some goddamn health.
I mean, some dental care and some vision care for seniors, but
you gotta hand it to Bernie for trying.
I do think it is amazing to watch centrists be so excited,
like you're saying that he didn't get more for people.
And let's be honest,
we're at a time when there's a rollback of fundamental rights for
half the population, specifically, when it comes to people who can bear new life.
And who have to carry that life for nine months and then give birth to that life,
nurse it, take care of it for the rest of its life or whatever, like 15.5,
or whenever it's cool to drop them off at a playground and be like peace.
But the point is this, these are Republicans who claim that they love
families and they're still against something like paid family leave,
still against universal child care.
And democrats can't even bring them to the table on their own BS,
on their own like anti-choice, whatever handmaid's tale crap to be like hey,
you guys said you support families, what about even extending the child tax credit?
No, no, no, no, no, they don't even want that.
And John, you studied poli science, come on there's something
legislatively wrong, not just with the Senate in and of itself, but
with 50 senators being able to not vote for a bill that they still helped to got.
What is that?
How is that an all part of our democratic process?
>> Yeah, well that's sort of sick.
That's the side that's sick leading into it and
assuming that the house which is going to pick it up on Friday and vote on it, and
that it would almost immediately be signed.
We get to experience over the next three months or
next couple of years something even sicker on the tail end.
So what always happens when the democrats pass a bill and
the Republicans don't support it, but it passes.
What happens on the other side?
Do you know the Republicans brag about bringing home the money they
voted against.
So when EV charges are being built in Kentucky or whatever,
they're gonna be like we brought home the EV MONEY, we're doing conservation.
We're saving species.
I tried to kill it, I didn't want it to succeed.
But now you should love me because I happened to be here and
my attempt to kill it was placid.
I didn't succeed in that, so vote for me.
That's what they're gonna do.
But anyway, we're talking now about some of the good.
And by the way, we still got more bad coming but just to reiterate,
if you're coming into this process a little bit late.
Some of the good in the Inflation Reduction Act.
$370 billion for climate change, that's good.
That is they say the most that's ever have been spent to deal with climate
change which is true, and it's true at the exact same time as the statement.
And it is not nearly as much as we should be spending.
It should be 10 times higher, but it is the most that we've ever spent.
So that's good.
Some of the most expensive drugs, Medicare will be able to negotiate for
not all of them and not immediately, but that's good.
Health care subsidies and the ACA will be extended, which is great for
the many people who use that.
And it would have been really politically stupid to let those laps right
before a midterm election.
15% minimum tax on corporations making $1 billion or
more in income with certain exceptions, which we will get to later in this block.
IRS tax enforcement, they're getting like $80 billion and
the excise tax on stock buybacks, which will not stop them literally at all, but
will raise a little bit of money when corporations continue to do it.
Now, we've got tax incentives to manufacture and
purchase electric vehicles, generate more wind and solar electricity, and
support things like direct air capture and hydrogen production.
All of this is good.
Independent analyses show that the bill,
combined with the stuff that we'd already passed, some changes made under Obama
could cut as much as 40% of US greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade.
That is not as much as we had said we want to get to, but
I guess it's better than the current path.
However, bear in mind, Joe Manchin,
in you getting this to happen also undercut in a number of different ways.
There are provisions calling for offshore oil lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico.
That's great for the environment, Coast of Alaska as well.
As well as a commitment to take up a separate
measure to ease the permitting of new energy projects.
Which my knee jerk reaction would be to say if it's not under reconciliation, it
has no chance of passing, but it's to ease the permitting of new energy projects.
So hey, maybe it'll get to 75 votes, who knows?
Also, and let's acknowledge the Mountain Valley Pipeline which was being
built by people who are big campaign donors to Joe Manchin,
is going to be receiving a cut of this money to help it finally get finished.
It's a 304 mile long gas pipeline that cuts through 1000 streams and wetlands.
But don't worry, pipelines never leak.
So all of that's good, Francesca.
I'm being sarcastic, it is good, it is good.
My question for you is acknowledging all of the ways that it could have been better
and the ways it was made worse at the last moment, which we're going to get to.
How much should we shift our evaluation of Joe Biden's first
term now that this will be passed.
How much does that change your evaluation?
>> [LAUGH] It doesn't change my evaluation personally.
I still think Joe Biden has stripped away or
let lapse the most popular portions of the initial American rescue plan.
And that was the child tax credit and that was, and
I also think he is not made good on some of his biggest campaign promises.
And that would also be things like student debt.
And I know we're gonna talk about that later.
What it does show is that yes, he can get something done and
that the democrats are not like utter buffoons, right?
That they are not completely incapable of doing anything.
But in order to get that, right, I mean looking at this bill,
honestly, we are truly with one hand taking carbon out of the atmosphere and
with the other hand just choking out a sea lion.
That is effectively what we're doing, and
maybe we will mitigate the disaster for our grandchildren.
But our great grandchildren, things are still going to be the same.
And again, it is what this administration does generally, which is get
a very milk toast piece of legislation that basically just says I did it.
I did it, and it's going to be a little less bad for
a shorter amount of time than you wanted, therefore you should vote me in.
And we're all like, well, guess what, we live in the ninth ring of hell.
I guess we wanna get to the eighth, cool.
So, and this is again, but on a long term platform,
to say nothing of fighting fascism, but
on a long term platform of fighting climate change, they're saying it.
And people like the Sunrise Movement leaders Varshini Prakash say,
this is not the climate bill that this generation needs, right?
However, it's the one that we've got.
Look, last thing I'm gonna say, Streams don't have lawyers, right?
The earth doesn't have a lawyer, but
what is the cost of polluting all of those places?
What's the cost of polluting the air?
What is the cost of polluting the ground?
My guess is that has not been factored in to the overall cost benefit.
We know it hasn't been factored in to how much this bill would quote unquote,
cost us, and quote unquote, how are we going to pay for it, and
where is the money going to come from?
Where is the money gonna come from when you've dried up streams?
Where's the water gonna come from when you've contaminated it?
>> Don't worry, Sinema put in the drought prevention measures for Arizona.
>> Brilliant.
So Amazon will be selling bottled water all across the West Coast.
So it'll be great. >> Exactly, yeah, and
if you run out of your bottled water, the drivers can refill it for you.
Anyway, that's a p joke.
>> [LAUGH] That is a p joke, I love a p joke in the morning.
>> Cuz they're abused, and they have to pee and bath, you get it?
See it's better when you have to explain- >> Yep.
>> The joke.
Look I'm of two minds,
I love to admit when I was wrong.
I don't think they're gonna pass any bill.
Now, how wrong I was is mitigated by the fact that there's a bunch of stuff in it
that they wouldn't have passed it if it didn't have money.
That goes to corporations, let alone the vote-a-rama stuff we're gonna turn to.
But I think we do have to acknowledge,
if we are wrong about something we should acknowledge it.
I didn't think they do anything and
they certainly didn't do what I would want to do.
But let's bear in mind, Biden won in 2020 not Bernie.
>> Yep.
>> Yep, I mean that's what we get,
but we can hopefully get a good progressive in 2024.
We can hopefully boot Sinema out of the Senate.
Hopefully, we can get a couple more seat buffer and then hopefully that doesn't
lead to people like Tester all of a sudden becoming even more mansioning.
Stay tuned.
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