House Democrat votes against advancing party's $3.5T plan
Democratic Rep. Scott Peters (Calif.) joined Republicans in voting against advancing his party’s $3.5 trillion social spending plan, as House leadership aims to vote on the package as early as next week. Peters, a member of the House Budget Committee, voted with 16 Republicans against advancing the measure from the panel on the Saturday afternoon. However, the legislation was able to advance from the Democratic-led committee with 20 votes.
Peters said he was “concerned” about the pace the party is moving to draft the legislation, which he said would likely not be adopted in the Senate as the current text stands “without major changes.”
He went on to voice further concerns about some of the spending levels in the measure and said he has “some other objections to the bill that have not been resolved but could be if given more time.”
Peters is one of three moderate House Democrats that bucked party lines weeks back, voting against including a measure in the reconciliation package that would lower drug prices.
He was "concerned" it could hurt innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.
His vote on Saturday highlights some of the obstacles leadership faces as it struggles to unite different factions of the party amid negotiations and ahead of a vote on a bipartisan infrastructure package slated for early next week in the House.
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/budget/573954-house-democrat-votes-against-advancing-partys-35t-plan
= new reply since forum marked as read
agenda within the reconciliation bill. Most are actually in that obstructionist bi-partisan Problem Solvers caucus, which was started and is backed by RW billionaires (Joe Lieberman's No Labels group is it's controlling entity). They even labelled TRUMP a 'Problem Solver' ffs.
Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey
Carolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia
Filemon Vela of Texas
Jared Golden of Maine
Henry Cuellar of Texas
Vicente Gonzalez of Texas
Ed Case of Hawaii
Jim Costa of California
Scott Peters of California
Kurt Schrader of Oregon
Stephanie Murphy of Florida
https://problemsolverscaucus.house.gov/members
He also is part of a trio of House Democrats in the Energy committee that oppose allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
Pharma CEOs, lobbyists showered Democrat with cash after his attempt to torpedo Pelosi’s drug pricing bill
https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/20/pharma-peters-cash-after-torpedo-pelosi-bill/
Has Big Pharma Bought Enough Democrats to Derail Biden’s Plan?
If Democrats allow the party’s Manchinema wing to derail prescription drug pricing reforms, they could lose their ability to govern.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/pharma-democrats-bribery/
A West Health/Gallup survey in June put the level of Democratic support for the proposal at 97 percent, and announced that “nearly all Democrats…support empowering the federal government to negotiate lower prices of brand-name prescription drugs covered by Medicare.” Since polls have margins of error, it’s reasonable to speculate about whether any grassroots Democrats oppose using the power of government to cut drug prices.
Unfortunately, a handful of congressional Democrats do oppose acting on the issue. Because Democrats control the House and Senate by narrow margins, this opposition threatens necessary reforms. If that threat becomes a reality, it could doom Democratic prospects for retaining control of Congress in 2022. President Biden acknowledged as much in his inaugural address, saying, “This is certain, I promise you: We will be judged, you and I, by how we resolve these cascading crises of our era.” That judgment will be harsh if Democrats fail to deliver on an issue so broadly popular as lowering drug prices.
Yet, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee reviewed a proposal for government negotiations to lower drug prices, three Democrats—Kathleen Rice of New York, Scott Peters of California, and Kurt Schrader of Oregon—voted “no.” Their votes, in combination with Republican “no” votes, created a tie that blocked approval of the reform by the key committee. While things may get sorted out in the House, circumstances in the Senate took a turn for the worse on September 15, when Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema reportedly informed Biden that she’s opposed to the drug-price reform proposals that Democrats ran and won on in 2020. Sinema’s resistance to the drug reform component of the Senate budget reconciliation bill, in combination with the more generalized rejection of the measure by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, has inspired speculation about whether Biden might be forced to accept a deep cut in the $3.5 trillion proposal—which, as outlined by Senate Budget Committee chair Bernie Sanders, relies on funds saved by negotiating lower drug prices to pay for Medicare expansion.
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These people are complaining about 'Omg, how is it going to be paid for?!' (which it is, that is a false-frame by them)
BUT THEN turning around and voting to kill off huge parts of the very measures THAT FUND IT.