Biden infrastructure/tax increase megathread

[Orser67]

Not that it's everything I wanted, but I'm absolutely ecstatic about this bill, particularly the climate measures. Defeating a sitting president was no small task, and the double-win in the GA special elections was a borderline miracle. I'm hopeful that this was will have cascading effects in terms of encouraging other countries to fight climate change, and I'm also optimistic that this will do something to fight the doomerism that has become so prevalent in this country's political discourse.

B+ presidency here we come.

[Orser67]

This comment makes me wonder: what other major pieces of legislation have passed on completely party-line votes in both chambers?

This is only major piece of legislation I can think of. OBRA-93, Obamacare, and the TCJA all had governing party opposition, while Dodd-Frank, the 2009 stimulus, and the Bush tax cuts had some opposite party support. There's probably some major law I'm not thinking of, but party line voting was fairly uncommon in the decades prior to the 1990s.

[Orser67]

The Upshot has a nice table depicting what's in the bill and how it compares to the original Build Back Better bill here.

I'm glad that Schumer focused on the climate as the one key thing to pass, and I don't know if the full Build Back Better plan ever had a real chance of passing, but it would have been cool to get universal pre-k for 3-4 year olds into the IRA.