By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt sees the huge social spending bill pushed by President Joe Biden as a huge political risk for Democrats.
Blunt, a Republican, says House Democrats will vote for the roughly $2 trillion social spending and climate change package at their own peril.
“I think about three dozen Democrats should be thinking about whether they want to be in the Congress or not and what the people they work for think about this level of spending and the impact it will have on inflation,” Blunt tells reporters during a recent visit to St. Joseph.
House leaders haven’t been able to get enough support for the measure to bring it to the floor for a vote, even though it has been pared down from the original $3.5 trillion price tag.
The House narrowly approved the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed earlier by the Senate 228-206. It goes to the president for his signature as Democrats scramble to get the votes needed to advance the bigger bill.
Blunt objects to provisions added to the massive spending bill to try to secure the votes needed for passage.
“I think the bigger problem the administration needs to be dealing with in trying to make it better instead of worse is the impact of inflation on families and on the economy and there’s no way you can put another three-and-a-half trillion dollars into the economy and not be driving inflation,” according to Blunt.
Biden Administration officials place the price tag of the newly negotiated social spending bill at $1.75 trillion. It includes universal pre-Kindergarten school for three-and four-year-olds. It would reduce premiums under the Affordable Care Act, provide an additional year of the monthly child tax credit payment, and set aside money to combat climate change. Paid family leave and free community college have been stripped from the bill.
Democrats plan to pay for the expanded programs through a series of taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
Blunt doesn’t expect the social spending bill to pass the Senate.
“This bill will not go anywhere in the Senate,” Blunt says. “The Senate at the end of the day, if there is a package, that package largely will need to be written by the two senators that have been in disagreement with moving forward on this, Sen. Sinema and Sen. Manchin.”
The two Democrats, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have raised objections to the larger spending bill, leaving it short of the votes needed to pass an evenly divided Senate.