The House of Representatives passed President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill at around 2 a.m. Friday, following a record-long speech from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
The vote on the nearly $2 trillion social spending plan was scheduled to happen Thursday night, but McCarthy's eight-hour speech pushed the decision into the wee hours.
"It was painful," Southern California Congressman Adam Schiff told KCBS Radio's Patti Reising on Friday. "Maybe if he had been a better speaker or had better material it wouldn't have been so tiresome, but it was kind of a rambling, often incoherent address. The whole premise seemed so tone-deaf, not the kind of thing you filibuster, but there he was."
The Build Back Better Bill addresses a plethora of topics including early childhood education, helping parents with childcare, helping seniors buy hearing aids, helping diabetics afford insulin, helping renters stay in their home and first time buyers get a home and attacking climate change, Schiff said.
"This legislation lifts half the children in the country who are in poverty out of poverty," he described. "It really is probably the first since the New Deal to be this transformative. It's like the New Deal for this generation."
There is hope that the bill will make its way onto the President's desk by Christmas and Schiff believes it may even be passed before that.
Related
