One of the last big-ticket bills that has a chance of becoming law this year is the misnamed Bipartisan Innovation Act, which masquerades as a measure to maintain U.S. technology’s edge over China but in reality is a 2,900-page industrial-policy bill stuffed with pork-barrel items, giveaways to Big Labor, and “woke” ideology.
While it passed the Senate last year with some GOP votes, only one Republican voted for the bill in the House. The two versions are now in conference committee.
In addition to $50 billion in subsidies to semiconductor firms, the Senate version creates a diversity directorate within the National Science Foundation, while the House bill parcels out billions to a U.N. climate fund.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is so eager to get a reconciliation bill that both raises taxes and revives parts of Joe Biden’s Build Back Better scheme that he is submitting initial language on the bill to the Senate parliamentarian this month. Schumer hopes to convince Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to back it.
Health-insurance companies are blitzing D.C. with ads demanding an extension of supersized Obamacare subsidies, which are now expected to be a central part of the spending side of the reconciliation bill. The tax side may be getting even worse, with the potential rumored inclusion of a carbon tariff.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is playing hardball. He told Schumer bluntly last week:
Let me be perfectly clear: there will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill.
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) June 30, 2022
Here’s hoping both bills die, but for now McConnell at least is making the stakes clear. If Democrats want to raise taxes and bring back Build Back Better, they will have to sacrifice their friends in Big Labor and the semiconductor industry.