This morn­ing, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed almost along par­ty lines to pass the cen­ter­piece of the Biden-Har­ris 2021 leg­isla­tive agen­da, send­ing it to the Unit­ed States Sen­ate for fur­ther consideration.

At 6:44 AM Pacif­ic, by a vote of 220–213, the House adopt­ed H.R. 5376, known as the Build Back Bet­ter Act, after Biden’s cam­paign slo­gan, with all but one Demo­c­rat in favor and all Repub­li­cans opposed. The House had orig­i­nal­ly been slat­ed to vote last night, but top House Repub­li­can Kevin McCarthy used his “mag­ic minute” speak­ing priv­i­leges to stage an eight hour talk­ing filibuster.

(The “mag­ic minute” refers to the abil­i­ty of the House Speak­er, House Major­i­ty Leader, or the House Minor­i­ty Leader to stretch a minute-long speech on the House floor into a speech last­ing any amount of time.)

McCarthy ceased fil­i­bus­ter­ing short­ly after 2 AM Pacific.

A few hours lat­er, the vote com­menced successfully.

“I thank Speak­er Pelosi and the House lead­er­ship and every House mem­ber who worked so hard and vot­ed to pass this bill,” said Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

“For the sec­ond time in just two weeks, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has moved on crit­i­cal and con­se­quen­tial pieces of my leg­isla­tive agenda.”

“Now, the Build Back Bet­ter Act goes to the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, where I look for­ward to it pass­ing as soon as pos­si­ble so I can sign it into law.”

“With the pas­sage of the Build Back Bet­ter Act, we – this Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress – are tak­ing our place in the long and hon­or­able her­itage of our democ­ra­cy, which – with leg­is­la­tion that will be the pil­lar of health and finan­cial secu­ri­ty in Amer­i­ca,” said Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi. “It will be his­toric in forg­ing land­mark progress for our nation. We talk about his­to­ry as we look and pre­pare for the future.”

Speak­er Pelosi cel­e­brates the pas­sage of Build Back Bet­ter Act (Pho­to: Speak­er’s office)

“Much has been said since the dis­tin­guished Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship spoke last evening. Much has been said on this Floor. But the facts are these: fol­low­ing the vision of Pres­i­dent Biden, guid­ed by the exper­tise and ener­gy of our Chairs, Mem­bers and staff, we have a Build Back Bet­ter bill that is his­toric, trans­for­ma­tive and larg­er than any­thing we have ever done before.  We are Build­ing Back Better.”

“If you are a par­ent, a senior, a child, a work­er, if you are an Amer­i­can, this bill – this bill is for you, and it is bet­ter – it’s bet­ter in terms of health care.  It’s bet­ter if you are a senior, your cost at the phar­ma­cy will be cut to a frac­tion, with annu­al costs capped under Medicare Part D, annu­al ben­e­fit from the Medicare hear­ing ben­e­fit.  It’s bet­ter if you have dia­betes: when you go to the phar­ma­cy, instead of pay­ing hun­dreds for insulin, you’ll pay no more than $35 per month.”

“Because of Democ­rats, mil­lions of kids will not have to live in pover­ty, seniors will have the health care they deserve at low­er costs, and fam­i­lies and small busi­ness­es will have what they need to thrive,” said DNC Chair Jaime Har­ri­son. “Because of Democ­rats, our econ­o­my will be stronger and work­ing Amer­i­cans, no mat­ter their back­ground or where they come from, will once again be a priority.”

“Amer­i­cans elect­ed Pres­i­dent Biden and Democ­rats because they want­ed a gov­ern­ment that works for them, and lead­ers who would roll up their sleeves and get things done. While Democ­rats are step­ping up and deliv­er­ing for the Amer­i­can peo­ple, every sin­gle House Repub­li­can showed that they only care about their extreme, obstruc­tion­ist agen­da. While Democ­rats will spend 2022 high­light­ing how Democ­rats deliv­ered, Repub­li­cans will have to answer to their con­stituents why they oppose low­er health care costs and pre­scrip­tion drug prices, child care fund­ing, and tak­ing on the cli­mate crisis.”

“The Build Back Bet­ter Act rep­re­sents an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to address the great­est exis­ten­tial threat of our time – cli­mate change – while cre­at­ing good-pay­ing, unions jobs and build­ing a sus­tain­able, resilient econ­o­my,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Smith. “This bill is the largest invest­ment to com­bat cli­mate change that our nation has ever seen, with mas­sive invest­ments in clean ener­gy and zero-emis­sions tech­nol­o­gy. The Biden-Har­ris Admin­is­tra­tion and Democ­rats in Con­gress have com­mit­ted to mak­ing cli­mate change a top pri­or­i­ty and this leg­is­la­tion fol­lows through on that commitment.”

“As a mom and pedi­a­tri­cian, I’ve seen first­hand the urgent need for a his­toric invest­ment in mid­dle class fam­i­lies to ease the grow­ing bur­dens they are fac­ing. That’s why I am delight­ed that the Build Back Bet­ter Act not only makes sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments in America’s future, it low­ers costs for work­ing fam­i­lies by extend­ing the month­ly Child Tax Cred­it, cap­ping the cost of child care, and set­ting every child up for life­long suc­cess with uni­ver­sal preschool,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kim Schrier.

“This bill will also make health care more afford­able for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans by cap­ping pre­scrip­tion drug costs for seniors, low­er­ing pre­mi­ums for peo­ple who buy insur­ance on their own, and stop­ping drug com­pa­nies from price gouging.”

“When we invest in women, fam­i­lies, and care­givers, we pow­er an eco­nom­ic recov­ery that ben­e­fits all of us,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­i­lyn Strick­land. “With the Build Back Bet­ter Act, Con­gress will deliv­er life-chang­ing ben­e­fits for fam­i­lies in the South Sound and across our nation — all with­out adding to the nation­al debt. I urge my col­leagues in the Sen­ate to join me and vote in favor of this trans­for­ma­tion­al bill that will address hous­ing, low­er health care costs, afford­able child care and in-home care, edu­ca­tion, cli­mate change and much more.”

To pass in the Sen­ate, the bill will need to get the votes of every mem­ber of the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus, includ­ing Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

The bill, which is being con­sid­ered under Con­gress’ rec­on­cil­i­a­tion rules to pre­vent Sen­ate Repub­li­cans from fil­i­bus­ter­ing it, will be sub­ject­ed to the Sen­ate amend­ment pro­ce­dure known as vote-a-rama, which is when a flur­ry of amend­ments are con­sid­ered in rapid suc­ces­sion for a long peri­od of time.

If all Sen­ate Repub­li­cans are present, the bill will need Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris’ tiebreak­ing vote to return to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. (The Sen­ate isn’t expect­ed to leave the bill unchanged, so it will need to return to the House.)

Har­ris has already cast thir­teen tiebreak­ing votes so far this year, and could be cast­ing sev­er­al more before the Build Back Bet­ter Act gets to Biden’s desk.

There are a lot of pro-fam­i­ly, pro-hous­ing, pro-jobs, pro-cli­mate invest­ments in the Build Back Bet­ter bill. For exam­ple, the legislation:

• pro­vides for paid fam­i­ly and med­ical leave at the fed­er­al level
• increas­es Pell Grants
• makes preschool uni­ver­sal­ly available
• expands appren­tice­ship opportunities
• appro­pri­ates funds to fight pol­lu­tion in dis­ad­van­taged communities
• low­ers the cost of pre­scrip­tion drugs
• per­ma­nent­ly extends the Chil­dren’s Health Insur­ance Pro­gram (CHIP)
• bol­sters pan­dem­ic prepa­ra­tion and pub­lic health research
• adds mon­ey for pro­grams like the Nation­al Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion Lifeline
• helps com­mu­ni­ties imple­ment next gen­er­a­tion 9–1‑1 services

Repub­li­cans have denounced the bill as big social­ism with­out both­er­ing to specif­i­cal­ly crit­i­cize what’s in it — prob­a­bly because they know that what’s in it are pri­or­i­ties Amer­i­cans real­ly, real­ly, real­ly want. They have spent years hap­pi­ly vot­ing for gar­gan­tu­an tax cuts and bloat­ed defense spend­ing bills that con­tain even more mon­ey for the mil­i­tary than request­ed by the Pentagon.

But now, they sim­ply can­not bring them­selves to vote for a bill that will invest $2 bil­lion in rur­al rental hous­ing projects, or $1.7 bil­lion for agri­cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion, or $100 mil­lion for repair and reha­bil­i­ta­tion of rur­al homes.

They rail against “big gov­ern­ment,” but the truth is, they actu­al­ly love big gov­ern­ment. It just has to be the right kind of big government.

The CIA, the FBI, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the NSA, and many less­er-known agen­cies are all part of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and Repub­li­cans have been hap­py to make them big­ger while leav­ing oth­er agen­cies bereft of resources to sup­port the needs of the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States.

The real­i­ty is that a coun­try of hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple can­not effec­tive­ly be served by a small gov­ern­ment. It is not the size of gov­ern­ment that’s impor­tant; it’s how effec­tive it is. As pro­gres­sives, we believe that gov­ern­ment should be as effec­tive as pos­si­ble. The invest­ments in this Build Back Bet­ter bill will raise Amer­i­cans’ qual­i­ty of life and help us catch up to where oth­er advanced democ­ra­cies have been for years. This leg­is­la­tion is his­toric, and sore­ly needed.

We are proud of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal and the Con­gres­sion­al Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus for using their lever­age to get this bill into con­crete form and passed off the House floor. There is still the hur­dle of get­ting through the Sen­ate, but we’re so much clos­er to hav­ing the Biden-Har­ris Jobs & Fam­i­lies plan signed into law than we were back in the sum­mer. Onward and forward!