The US Senate on Sunday approved President Joe Biden’s climate, tax and health care plan. The approval was preceded by eighteen months of difficult negotiations.
The 50 Democrats in the Senate voted in favor of the plans, the 50 Republicans voted against. The decisive vote therefore had to come from Vice President Kamala Harris. This approved a legislative package worth a total of $430 billion. Next week, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is also expected to approve the package, at which point Biden can sign it.
The plan came about after difficult talks with the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, in particular Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, and Senate Leader Chuck Schumer. The outcome of this is that the US will allocate some 370 billion dollars up to 2030 for investments in the climate, which must partly be paid for by income from tax increases.
Climate investments
US President Joe Biden is particularly pleased with the climate investment he calls “the largest investment in history to combat climate change”. According to him, the plans will create jobs in the US and help lower energy costs for Americans, among other things. According to the Democrats, the bill should ensure that CO2 emissions are reduced by 40 percent by 2030.
Critics to Biden’s left, however, point out that climate investment is nowhere near enough to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. Moreover, the level of investments in the climate does not matter. After all, these are spread over eight years and amount to about 46 billion dollars on an annual basis. That’s less than 6 percent of U.S. military spending, which was $801 billion in 2021, according to the Department of Defense.