Friday 19th November 2021
Republicans against Biden’s package
Hours of speech postpone voting
The US Republican Kevin McCarthy is supposed to only speak for a minute. But then his address lasts over five hours. The MP wastes time with random topics – and ultimately achieves his goal with boos.
With a speech that lasted for hours, the minority leader in the US House of Representatives forced the vote on President Joe Biden’s trillion dollar social and climate protection package to be postponed. Kevin McCarthy, leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, spoke for more than five hours instead of a planned minute – to mockery and boos from the Democrats. The vote was therefore postponed to this Friday morning.
McCarthy spoke at 8:30 p.m. and was still talking at 1:30 a.m. Without context, he commented on Biden’s spending policy and his travels to Europe, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Elon Musk, Abraham Lincoln, the Nobel Peace Prize and the work of art in his office. “I don’t know if you think I’m going to quit because you left. I don’t,” McCarthy said when the Democrats learned his tactic was working and began to leave the Chamber. “I really don’t speak to you. I speak to the American people.”
The chairman of the Congress Chamber, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi, had previously expressed the hope of being able to vote on the law text with a volume of 1.75 trillion dollars (around 1.5 trillion euros) on Thursday. The package known as Build Back Better – something like: Better rebuild – would bring a “historic” change in health care, family policy and climate protection, explained Pelosi. “It will create millions of well-paid jobs, cut costs and taxes for families, and ensure that the super-rich and big corporations do their fair share.”
Vote is still pending
After a vote in the House of Representatives, the text still has to go to the Senate, where an uncertain fate awaits. The Democrats cannot allow themselves a single deviator in the House of Lords if they want to pass the law. The Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has repeatedly made his reservations about the trillion package clear. In his own words, he fears an increase in inflation and national debt.
Biden had already cut the social and climate protection package, initially set to $ 3.5 trillion, in half in view of Manchin’s resistance. Plans include expanding childcare, care for the elderly and statutory health insurance, tax cuts for families and $ 555 billion for climate policy.
The interim blockade of his reform agenda has seriously damaged Biden – especially since the sharp rise in inflation in the wake of the corona pandemic is affecting the president severely. His poll numbers have plummeted in the past few months.