The budget reconciliation process by which President Biden and Dems can move key legislation without Republican votes in the evenly-split Senate was given additional life in a ruling yesterday by the Senate parliamentarian. With Senate Republicans expected to unite as a bloc to oppose any Dem legislation, the ruling gives Dems a tool to pass the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Act / infrastructure bill, but only if they can dissuade ConservaDems like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Seditionland) from joining Republicans in their solid opposition.
A key part of the infrastructure legislation is repealing parts of the former guy's 2017 tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations. Biden's plan to pay for the infrastructure investments include raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% and taxing corporations that move abroad to countries with more favorable tax rates. Sen. Manchin wants to peg the corporate rate at 25% rather than 28%, and may withhold his vote on that point. When the 2017 tax bill reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, Republicans claimed it would spur business investment, when actually it was used by corporations to buy back their stock and was an economic stimulus dud, as all of their "trickle down" economic proposals are.
