A $1.7 trillion bill passed the Senate on Thursday, and now only needs the House’s final approval. What does it include and why is it important?
Joe Biden’s administration doesn’t want to take chances: before the House changes hands in January, he wants to sign into law his spending bill. On Thursday, the Senate passed the giant $1.7 trillion (higher than Canada’s GDP) measure long anticipated by US president Biden.
The spending bill was passed with the help of some Republican voters as well, given the slim majority currently held by Democrats in the Senate. The most important name present in the list of Republican voters is Mitch McConnell, GOP Senate leader.
His vote probably swayed his wing of the party to vote in favor of Biden’s bill, though former president and future Republican candidate Donald Trump called against it.
In January, following the Midterm elections, the Democrats will acquire an additional seat in the Senate. They, however, needed to pass this bill as soon as possible in order to exploit their temporary majority in the House.
Next January the House of Representatives will pass under Republican control, however thin it might be. Even in that case, Democrats will only need to convince a few Republicans (specifically 5) to win the majority back.
In any case, this bill was too important for Joe Biden to rely on a disloyal House. Now that it passed the Senate, it went to the lower chamber for discussion as early as today, Friday 23rd.
The $1.7 trillion package will likely pass the House as well, and then it will only need Biden’s signature to become law.
What does the bill include
The absolutely massive bipartisan spending bill (if it were a country, it would be the world’s 9th richest) includes measures in all kinds of sectors.
First and foremost, $45 billion will go in economic and military aid to Ukraine. Following Zelensky’s visit to the White House, he convinced American lawmakers that his is a “fight for democracy”.
If Ukraine had any success on the field in recent months (which were plenty) was only thanks to US military support and its modern weapons.
Always in the matter of defense, the bill increases internal military spending by 10%, including a 4.6% raise on troops salary.
A further $38 billion will go into emergency assistance, targeting the Southern US states hit by natural disasters. $9 billion will also be implemented in the fight against Covid-19.
Other prominent amendments are the ban of TikTok from federal devices and a $11.3 billion budgeting effort against domestic terrorism. In the latter measure, legal efforts against the January 6th assault to the Capitol are included.
In general, the bill is over a thousand pages long, which received many criticisms by Republican congressmen. In their opinion, it was passed too hastily given the scale of the bill.
But now the bill is in the hands of the House, still under a prominent Democratic control. Its approval and consequent signature by Biden are just a matter of days.
