Build Back Better Passes House

Good morning to all of our regular readers, but especially those who watched all of Kevin McCarthy’s more than eight-hour-long speech on the floor last night. 

Last night, Democrats were prepared to pass President Biden’s massive social spending bill, the Build Back Better Act, in the House. Around 5 p.m. Thursday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its cost estimate analysis of BBB, which caused a bit of confusion. The CBO estimate said that over 10 years the bill would add $367 billion to the federal deficit—contrary to the White House’s claim that the plan was fully paid for. 

Because of how CBO scores are calculated, the estimate did not officially take into account the IRS tax enforcement portion of the bill. The CBO estimated that $207 billion would be brought in by the enforcement mechanism, meaning, after some quick math, a total of $160 billion would be added to the federal deficit over a decade. 

After a speedy House Rules Committee meeting to move the BBB Act to the floor of the House, debate began. Reporters and members were told the vote to finally pass BBB would happen around 9 p.m.. Some reporters were even thinking about sneaking in a happy hour after final passage. 

Then Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stepped up to the microphone. 

In the House, the speaker, majority leader, and minority leader have the ability to speak for as long as they want, known as a magic minute. McCarthy spoke for a record-setting eight hours and 32 minutes on the floor of the House in opposition to the BBB Act. 

If his intentions were to dissuade a few Democrats from voting for the measure, it did not work. 

This morning, BBB passed mostly on a party line vote, 220-213, with only one Democrat voting against the bill. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine cited its tax cuts for wealthy Americans in predominantly blue states as his reasoning for voting against it. Hugging, clapping, and even chants of “Nancy, Nancy” broke out among Democrats after the bill was finally passed. 

The package includes sweeping investments in combating climate change and the social safety net. We covered its housing and health provisions here, and the climate aspects here. We’ll bring you more details of the legislation next week.

There’s still a long road ahead for the BBB Act before it becomes law. 

Now, the bill heads to the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will try to pass it via reconciliation. However, if changes are made to the bill by amendment, another vote in the House will need to occur before it heads to the president’s desk. 

House Censures GOP Rep. Paul Gosar, Strips Him of Committee Assignments

Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar became the first House member censured in the chamber in more than a decade this week, when Democrats moved to punish him for tweeting an altered anime video that depicted him stabbing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden.

Gosar was also stripped of his assignments on the House Natural Resources Committee and the Oversight and Reform Committee.

The resolution passed 223-207, with GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger being the only Republicans to support the measure. GOP Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio voted present, citing his position on the House ethics panel, which will review Gosar’s behavior.

As part of the censure process, Gosar was required to stand in the well of the chamber Wednesday and listen to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi read the censure resolution. 

“We cannot have a member joking about murdering each other or threatening the president of the United States,” Pelosi said on the House floor Wednesday ahead of the vote. She also criticized Republican leaders for not moving to discipline him on their own.

In interviews, Democrats characterized Gosar’s video as a threat to the safety of their colleagues. 

“You have a member who portrayed himself killing another member,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz told The Dispatch. “And if that doesn’t violate the rules of decorum and need to cry out, to be ruled as a line that you cannot cross without consequences, then I don’t know what does.”

Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a progressive from New York, described Gosar’s actions as “disgusting and despicable and deplorable,” adding that he “needs to be kicked out of Congress immediately.”

As we’ve previously covered in Uphill, Gosar has a history of supporting conspiracy theories and has been criticized for his ties to white nationalists. 

The House last approved a censure resolution in 2010 against Democrat Rep. Charles Rangel, when an ethics panel concluded the New York lawmaker had misused federal resources, lied on financial disclosure forms, and failed to pay property taxes in the Dominican Republic for a rental property.

In the House, there have been 23 members censured for offenses ranging from physical altercations with their colleagues, sexual misconduct, and financial fraud. In the Senate, meanwhile, 10 senators have been censured. Lawmakers have also censured four presidents and a number of Cabinet secretaries.

Gosar is the second Republican to lose his committee spots this year. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was removed from her committees after CNN reporters uncovered earlier comments she’d made promoting conspiracy theories and violence.

The punishment is only expected to escalate partisan tensions in Congress: Republicans have already vowed to remove Reps. Ilhan Omar from her committees if they retake the majority in the 2022 elections.

Committees give members of Congress the opportunity to exercise oversight, advocate for their legislative proposals, and, of course, generate video clips for social media.

“It is much more difficult to be an effective legislator if you’re not on a committee,” former Rep. Dan Lipinkski, a Blue Dog Democrat from Illinois, said in an interview. “You are really handicapped if you are someone who is really concerned about legislating. Now, there are many members now who aren’t really concerned about being legislators and for them it doesn’t really matter.”

Gosar defended himself before the vote, saying the video was not intended to incite violence. He added that he “self-censored” by voluntarily deleting the video from his accounts. Gosar reportedly made a play for his Republican colleagues’ support in a private GOP conference meeting this week, where he apologized for posting the video and said it was supposed to appeal to younger voters. He did not apologize to Ocasio-Cortez during his public remarks Wednesday, however.

Rank-and-file Republicans see the resolution as an overreaction that does little more than fuel partisanship and degrade institutional norms. 

“I want to know what the clearly articulable standard is for censuring somebody,” said GOP Rep. Peter Meijer in an interview, adding that the more recent examples of censures have resulted from formal ethics complaints or legal actions. “If we’re just using a subjective standard, that is something I know many folks will love to unleash on Democratic members,” Meijer added. 

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy told The Dispatch that the resolution is a precedent he plans to uphold if he is elected speaker next year. ​​“That’s the standard,” he said. “They all voted for it.”

He said Thursday that Gosar and Greene will be reinstated to their committees if Republicans win the majority. “They’ll have committees,” McCarthy said. “They may have better committee assignments.”

In 2019, McCarthy stripped former Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King of his committee assignments for making racist remarks. 

The once rare practice of stripping House members of their committee assignments has been sought more frequently this Congress, with several Freedom Caucus members calling last week for the same punishment to be hurled at the 13 GOP members of their own conference who voted in favor of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package on November 5. 

During Tuesday’s House Republican conference meeting, several members reportedly singled out Rep. John Katko, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, for voting in favor of the bill. According to CNN, Rep. Dan Bishop introduced a measure that would strip Katko of his ranking position on the House Homeland Security Committee. The measure was referred to the GOP steering committee, where it is likely to never see the light of day. 

GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who voted for the infrastructure package, said in an interview with The Dispatch that he hopes McCarthy is telling members behind closed doors to stop attacking their Republican colleagues. “I hope people privately tell these members, ‘Knock it off. You’re weakening the party,’” Bacon said. 

Bacon said he “likely” would have voted for the resolution to punish Gosar if it had included only a censure clause. But he argued that stripping Gosar of his committees was an unreasonable move that sets an unhealthy precedent ahead of next year’s midterms. 

“There will be hell to pay a year from now when we take the leadership,” Bacon said. “You think it’s going to stop? It’s not. This is going to be bloodletting in January of 2023.”