WASHINGTON, Aug 7 — After 18 months, a possible victory for Joe Biden's social and climate reform legislation seems within reach: Congress yesterday began debating a revised version of the US president's cornerstone bill, the fruit of numerous compromises with those on his party's right.
That would make it the largest investment yet in clean energy by the United States, something that Biden has called"historic." But the package also would make billions of dollars in tax credits available to some of the country's worst polluters to help them in the transition to cleaner energy. That move has been sharply criticised by the party's progressive wing, though most have accepted it as a necessary evil.
A major reform in the bill would, for example, force pharmaceutical companies to offer rebates for certain drugs if the prices are rising faster than inflation. The bill also aims to reduce the federal deficit via a minimum corporate tax of 15 percent for all companies with profits exceeding US$1 billion.The ambitious spending plan is popular among Americans, according to several polls, but has been strongly denounced by Republicans, who say Biden will stoke record-breaking inflation.