https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/me ... f_2022.pdf
Here's a one-page summary from Senate Democrats (https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/me ... ummary.pdf)
- Inflation Reduction Act 1 Page.JPG (148.91 KiB) Viewed 2147 times
Imagine Boebert, Greene & Gaetz along with GOP senators will be deeply studying the bill since they have many days to prepare before the Senate vote-a-rama and the House is called back into session to pass it.
Here's a catch-up on how the deal happened with some of the highlights of the bill, a breakdown on the climate change aspects, and the drama Sen. Sinema is now bringing to the table. There's an incredible opportunity here; while extending the ACA subsidies for longer than 3 years would have been less stressful, at least we won't see massive premium jumps next year.
And with all the crocodile tears about reducing the deficit from Republicans, this bill reduces it by $300B (and President Biden paid down $1.1 Trillion this year, the biggest deficit reduction payment ever), now its crickets from the GOP. This is so true:
- GOP Playbook.jpg (92.84 KiB) Viewed 2147 times
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/357 ... -betrayed/Inside the secret Manchin-Schumer deal: Dems shocked, GOP feels betrayed
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 07/29/22 5:23 AM ET
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) reached their agreement on a major tax and climate package Tuesday evening but kept it a closely guarded secret — giving Democrats just enough time to pass a $280 billion chips and science bill that Republicans would have otherwise blocked. The announcement of the deal, which would raise $739 billion in new tax revenue, fund an array of new climate provisions and pay down $300 billion of the federal deficit, came as a complete surprise to their Senate colleagues. “I’d say it’s somewhere between a surprise and a shock,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said after attending a special caucus meeting Thursday morning where Schumer explained the deal.
It was all the more surprising because less than two weeks earlier, the talks between Schumer and Manchin fell apart in dramatic fashion, when Schumer signaled he would proceed with a scaled-down budget reconciliation bill that included only prescription drug reform and a two-year extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. Manchin admitted Thursday morning that he and Schumer lost their tempers in a heated discussion on July 14 when the Democratic leader accused him of “walking away” from a deal after months of negotiations. “It got a little bit hot and heated, if you will,” he said. “He said, ‘You’re walking, you’re not going to do this or that,’” Manchin recalled. “I said, ‘Chuck, I’m not walking away from anything, I’m just being very cautious. The people of West Virginia cannot afford higher prices. They can’t afford higher gasoline prices, higher food prices.’” Manchin said the talks collapsed because of his reluctance to enact a big tax and climate bill after the Bureau of Labor Statics reported July 13 that inflation hit 9.1 percent in June compared to the year before.
Manchin said Schumer characterized him as walking away from the deal but insisted he never did so. “I’ve never been in reverse in my lifetime and I never walked away,” he said. Manchin said he bumped into Schumer again the following Monday and their tempers had cooled at that point. “By Monday we ran into each other again. I said, ‘Are you still upset?’ He said, ‘I’m very discouraged.’ I said, ‘Well, you shouldn’t be. Something positive could be done if we all want to work rationally,’” Manchin said, recounting the key moment. He said their staffs started working together in earnest the next day, July 19. Manchin said his staff and Schumer’s staff picked up the things they were working on before and “started restructuring that.”
They finally hashed out a deal on Tuesday evening, recognizing they had to announce the package on Wednesday if it had any chance of passing before the scheduled start of a lengthy summer recess on Aug. 6. “By Tuesday night, everyone — there wasn’t that many of us —those of us who might have had some disagreements, finally come to agreement,” he said. “We had the text pretty much lined up in that arena. That’s why the text was finished on Wednesday. Wednesday morning it was confirmed that it was a go.” It just so happened the timing aligned perfectly with Schumer’s plan to hold a vote on final passage of the chips and science bill at noontime Wednesday.
Republicans who voted for tens of billions of dollars for the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry and the National Science Foundation were outraged and felt betrayed. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a key player in getting the chips and science bill passed, said he received “assurance privately from some Democrats, including the staff of the Senate majority leader, that the tax and climate provisions were off the table,” which Republicans said would be a precondition for moving the chips bill. Cornyn took to the Senate floor Thursday afternoon to rail against the secret climate and tax deal. “How can we negotiate in good faith, compromise where necessary, and get things done together after the majority leader and the senator from West Virginia pull a stunt like this?” he said with rising exasperation. “To look you in the eye and tell you one thing and to do another is absolutely unforgivable.” Manchin on Thursday insisted that he and Schumer didn’t pull a “fast one” on Republicans by announcing the deal Wednesday afternoon. “No, you know, I sure hope they don’t feel that way. I mean, I understand that they are, but I don’t know why,” he told reporters on a conference call.
Schumer told reporters Thursday afternoon that he and Manchin unveiled the legislative text and the summaries of the deal as soon as they finished it. “Because of the length of the parliamentary birdbath, we wanted to get this done as quickly as possible,” he said, making a reference to the work officials will do to determine if the package can be passed under an arcane budgetary rule being used to avoid a GOP filibuster. Schumer noted that the talks with Manchin broke down on July 14 but that Manchin “came to visit me” the following week. “Manchin requested a meeting with me on the 18th and he said, ‘Can we work together and try to put together a bill?’ I said as long as we finish it in August, we’re not waiting until September,” he said. Manchin said his staff took the lead at that point. “It was me and my staff and then we worked with Schumer’s staff. My staff was driving it, we wrote the bill. Schumer’s staff would look at it, we’d negotiate,” he told West Virginia radio host Hoppy Kercheval Wednesday morning.He said his staff shaved about $400 billion to $500 billion in other revenue-producing tax reforms from the bill. “There was a lot more revenue in there before that,” he said, explaining how the bill changed after he and Schumer blew up at each other.
By Tuesday evening they agreed to setting a 15 percent corporate minimum tax on companies with profits in excess of $1 billion, beefing up IRS enforcement of tax compliance and closing the carried interest loophole that allows asset managers to pay capital gains tax rates on income earned from profitable investments. Manchin kept President Biden on the sidelines after last year’s negotiations between Manchin and the White House, which ended in failure and public recriminations after months of fruitless talks. “President Biden was not involved,” he told West Virginia MetroNews. “I was not going to bring the president in. I didn’t think it was fair to bring him in. This thing could very well have not happened at all,” he said, explaining he didn’t want to involve the president in case talks fell apart again.
Jul 29, 2022 - Energy & Environment
The big new climate bill's most important provisions
Andrew Freedman
The climate and energy provisions in the Senate's revenue and spending deal cover everything from incentives to buy electric vehicles to spurring the development of next-generation climate technologies, such as direct air capture.
The big picture: The draft bill would bring U.S. carbon dioxide and methane emissions down and dramatically scale up the development and deployment of new technologies.
Here are the biggest changes, if the bill passes.
Clean energy tax credits: Several climate policy experts told Axios Thursday that these provisions taken together would make the biggest difference in cutting emissions. These include a decade of tax credits that would apply broadly to zero carbon technologies including existing nuclear power plants and advanced nuclear technologies, clean hydrogen, carbon capture and storage as well as wind and solar power. The bill would also provide incentives for deploying direct air capture technologies. The Biden administration has already been funding demonstration projects for everything from clean hydrogen to long duration energy storage. The proposed bill would provide a path for some of these projects to be deployed. Incentives would also be directed to battery manufacturing and the domestic mining of critical minerals. Consumers could qualify for tax credits or rebates for making their homes more energy efficient by adding heat pumps and electric stoves, among other steps. Electric vehicle incentives: These provisions would speed the wider adoption of clean technologies and help reduce transportation emissions, which are the largest contributor to U.S. annual emissions.
Specifically, the bill provides up to a $7,500 clean vehicle tax credit for EVs that are built in North America, with added incentives for having battery components largely manufactured or assembled in North America. The credit could be applied as a rebate at the point of sale. The bill would also provide $4,000 in tax incentives for the purchase of used clean vehicles. The EV incentives would be subjected to annual gross income limitations, to direct the benefits to mass market customers, rather than wealthy buyers.
Methane fee: Another provision that would have a big impact, according to policy analysts and scientists, is a methane fee program that would make it increasingly costly for the energy industry to emit this powerful greenhouse gas. The fee would begin at $900 per metric ton of emissions above federal limits in 2024 and increase to $1,500 per metric ton in 2026 and thereafter.
What's not in the bill: The deal leaves out some elements of previous climate proposals, such as incentives to build new electric transmission lines to support the broader deployment of renewables. But congressional action was never going to get the U.S. all the way to its emissions reduction target under the Paris agreement, notes Nathan Hultman, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Global Sustainability. He said the draft bill would go about as far as necessary to help meet the U.S. target, and it is now up to federal agencies, state lawmakers, cities and private industry to do the rest. Other analysts agree.
The intrigue: The mere reveal of this bill changed the international discourse on climate policy, since the U.S. was perceived as lagging further behind and unable to follow through on its pledges made at the U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow last year. "Without this legislation, there was no question that the international credibility of the US would be significantly undermined," David Waskow of the World Resources Institute told Axios via email.
What we're watching: The bill's emergence takes much of the pressure off President Biden to rely mainly on executive actions to address climate change, including declaring a climate emergency. Also, some potentially thorny issues have been punted to a separate legislative effort that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has secured, which is aimed at reforming the approval process for pipelines and other energy infrastructure.
https://www.axios.com/2022/07/30/sinema ... -democrats10 hours ago - Politics & Policy
Sinema indicates she may want to change Schumer-Manchin deal
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) had a message for her Democratic colleagues before she flew home to Arizona for the weekend: She's preserving her options.
Why it matters: Sinema has leverage and she knows it. Any potential modification to the Democrat's climate and deficit reduction package — like knocking out the $14 billion provision on carried interest — could cause the fragile deal to collapse. Her posture is causing something between angst and fear in the Democratic caucus as senators wait for her to render a verdict on the secret deal announced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin last Thursday.
Driving the news: Sinema has given no assurances to colleagues that she’ll vote along party lines in the so-called “vote-a-rama” for the $740 billion bill next week, according to people familiar with the matter. The vote-a-rama process allows lawmakers to offer an unlimited number of amendments, as long as they are ruled germane by the Senate parliamentarian. Senators — and reporters — expect a late night. Republicans, steaming mad that Democrats have a chance to send a $280 billion China competition package and a massive climate and health care bill to President Biden, will use the vote-a-rama to force vulnerable Democrats to take politically difficult votes. They'll also attempt to kill the reconciliation package with poison pills — amendments that make it impossible for Schumer to find 50 votes for final passage.
The intrigue: Not only is Sinema indicating that she's open to letting Republicans modify the bill, she has given no guarantees she’ll support a final “wrap-around” amendment, which would restore the original Schumer-Manchin deal.
The big picture: Schumer made a calculated decision to negotiate a package with Manchin in secrecy. He assumed that all of his other members, including Sinema, would fall into line and support the deal. Now his caucus is digesting the specifics, with Sinema taking a printout of the 725-page bill back to Arizona on Friday for some dense in-flight reading. Schumer will find out this week if his gamble in keeping Sinema in the dark will pay off.
What we're watching: While Sinema supported the 15% minimum book tax back in December, which would raise more than $300 billion, Schumer never bothered to check if her position changed, given the darkening economic outlook. Schumer and Manchin also inserted the language on taxing carried interest as regular income, which would raise approximately $14 billion, knowing full well that Sinema never agreed to it. That move blindsided Sinema. Now the private equity industry, which has contributed heavily to Sinema, is hopeful that she'll knock the provision out.
The intrigue: While Schumer and Manchin have a well-documented and tumultuous relationship — replete with private fence-mending Italian dinners — Schumer and Sinema do not regularly engage.
Flashback: The Schumer-Sinema relationship took a big blow back in February when Schumer declined to endorse Sinema for her 2024 re-election when directly asked by CNN. She didn't attend her party's caucus meeting on Thursday.
Between the lines: Sinema and Manchin always agreed that President Biden’s initial $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan needed to be trimmed down. They are also on the same page on the need to act on climate change. If Manchin has been primarily concerned with inflation, her guiding principles have always been economic growth and new jobs in Arizona.
The bottom line: Sinema isn't terribly pleased with how Schumer has foisted this package upon her. She reserves the right to modify it. But she also knows that a progressive challenger, like Rep. Ruben Gallego, is all but guaranteed in 2024 if she's held responsible for killing the Democrats best shot at a climate bill in years.
s titular Mama June in Fogbow's Favourite Show™ Mama June: From Not To Hot! Fogbow's Theme Song™ Edith Massey's "I Got The Evidence!" 
I have ABSOLUTELY NO FAITH in either of these tools.
x5
