Democrats score win for infrastructure bill

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Associated Press/Photo by Jonathan Ernst (file)

Democrats score win for infrastructure bill

The Senate parliamentarian gave President Joe Biden’s massive infrastructure spending bill a boost on Monday. Elizabeth MacDonough ruled Democrats may use budget reconciliation to pass the measure.

What does that mean? Budget reconciliation allows Democrats to avoid a filibuster, which would hold up the bill unless it got 60 votes—a virtual impossibility in the divided Senate. But that doesn’t mean the $2.3 trillion dollar proposal is a done deal. With the Senate evenly split between the parties, Democrats can’t afford to lose any support from their own members. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has said he opposes raising the corporate tax rate above 25 percent. Biden wants to increase it to 28 percent to help pay for the infrastructure bill.

Dig deeper: Read Harvest Prude’s report in The Stew explaining how the budget reconciliation process kept a minimum wage hike out of the coronavirus relief package.

Leigh Jones

Leigh is features editor for WORLD. She is a World Journalism Institute graduate who spent six years as a newspaper reporter in Texas before joining WORLD News Group. Leigh also co-wrote Infinite Monster: Courage, Hope, and Resurrection in the Face of One of America's Largest Hurricanes. She resides with her husband and daughter in Houston, Texas.