October 29, 2021

By David Leonhardt

Good morning. Don't confuse legislative sausage-making with substantive impact.

President Biden and Nancy Pelosi at the Capitol yesterday.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Ugly and yet 'huge'

The legislative process is rarely pretty. It highlights political divisions and can feel disconnected from people's lives. When a big bill is making its way through Congress, voters are often turned off.

The central piece of President Biden's agenda has followed the pattern. It has caused squabbles among Democrats, and the plan has already shrunk nearly by half, disappointing progressives, amusing Republicans and providing grist for critical media coverage.

Eventually, though, the process behind a bill's passage tends to fade into history. What matters far more is a bill's substance. And if Congress passes anything resembling the legislative framework that Biden announced yesterday, it will be highly consequential.

That was the main message I heard from policy experts yesterday when I asked them to assess the framework. Compared with Biden's original proposal, it looks paltry. Compared with the status quo, it looks like a big deal.

"This is not going to solve every problem, but it is going to change people's lives," Megan Curran of Columbia University's Center on Poverty and Social Policy told me.

The bill would sharply cut child poverty; reduce child-care and health care expenses by thousands of dollars a year for many families; enroll more children in pre-K; provide more people with health insurance; finance the building of one million affordable housing units; and slow climate change by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

"Because they started big, there's a tendency to say, 'Oh, it's disappointing' — but it's huge," said Jane Waldfogel, a longtime scholar of children and families. "If you had told us a year ago that there was going to be a bill this fall that would have an extension of the child tax credit, big funding for child care, pre-K, health care, et cetera, I would have said, 'In your dreams.'"

There are a few important caveats:

One, major provisions did fall out of the bill, including paid leave, drug-price reductions and several tax increases on the wealthy. "No one got everything they wanted, including me," Biden said yesterday, before leaving on a trip to Rome.
Two, the political impact may be modest, especially in the short term. Democrats remain underdogs to keep congressional control next year.
Three — most importantly — a framework is not the same thing as a law, as my colleague Carl Hulse notes. Some members of Congress are still trying to make changes, and Democrats will have to remain almost completely unified to pass a bill.

Below is a breakdown of the biggest pieces of the $1.8 trillion, 10-year plan, assuming it passes in something like its current form.

Climate

Biden has vowed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 50 percent by the end of this decade, relative to 2005 levels. Many scientists consider that to be a good target, one that would let the U.S. do its part to prevent the planet from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

Biden's original legislative proposal would have come very close to achieving that goal, Coral Davenport, a Times reporter, says. But Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia opposed a provision to retire coal and natural-gas plants. The remaining climate package — mostly tax credits to reduce pollution — will likely get the country about halfway to Biden's goal. (Here is Coral's full analysis.)

"The package is really strong," Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, told me. "We're going to need more."

For Biden to achieve the rest of his emissions goal, his administration would need to regulate pollution more aggressively, and states would need to pass their own clean-energy bills.

A preschool in Greensboro, N.C.Travis Dove for The New York Times

Education and child care

Today, slightly more than half of pre-school-age children attend a program; the Biden framework would aim to make preschool universally available. It would also increase the maximum Pell grant — the largest college financial-aid program — by $550. And it would cap the amount of money that families spend on child care at 7 percent of their income; today, the average for families that have young children and pay for care is about 13 percent.

"The investments in preschool and child care have the potential to reshape American education," Erica Greenberg of the Urban Institute told me. One unknown, her colleague Matthew Chingos said, is whether the bill will manage to lift the quality of the education programs it funds. In both pre-K and higher education, many schools are excellent — and many others perform poorly.

Another question: Will a future Congress extend the bill's child tax credit — which is worth up to $3,600 per child per year and crucial to the projected reduction of child poverty? To hold down the bill's cost, the Democrats' framework allows the expanded credit to expire next year. They are hoping that the provision proves too popular for Republicans to block in the future.

Health care and more

The framework sets out to fix two problems with Obamacare — by expanding Medicaid in the 12 states that have not already done so, and by reducing the cost of private health insurance for middle- and lower-income people who buy it on the Obamacare exchanges.

Jason Furman, an economist and former adviser to Barack Obama, cited these improvements in a Twitter thread pointing out the benefits of passing legislation that is flawed but "much better than nothing." Future policymakers can build off the successes of earlier legislation and also fix its problems — which is a reason to celebrate Biden's framework, he suggested.

The framework would also add hearing coverage to Medicare, expand in-home care for older adults and disabled Americans, and raise wages for home health care workers.

Taxing the rich

The bill would not add to the deficit, White House officials claim, because of tax increases on corporations and the affluent — although the most ambitious tax increases on the wealthy did not survive the negotiations.

The framework does include a minimum tax on corporations, to prevent them from using so many deductions and loopholes that they pay little tax. It also raises income taxes on the very affluent, with a 5 percent surcharge on household income above $10 million and another 3 percent on income above $25 million.

For more: Eric Levitz of New York Magazine criticizes the cutting of popular provisions from the plan, like drug-price reductions.

THE LATEST NEWS

The Virus

Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Outbreak.info

As Delta surged, the vaccines largely worked, these charts show.
Thousands of New York City municipal workers, including police officers and firefighters, face unpaid leave if they don't get a vaccine shot by Monday.
China is still chasing full eradication of the virus. Experts are skeptical.

Politics

The Albany County sheriff charged Andrew Cuomo with forcible touching, a misdemeanor sex crime.
For the first time in public, a detainee described his torture at C.I.A. black sites, including forced feedings, waterboarding and sexual abuse.
Oklahoma executed a death row inmate. Like other executions in the state, this one — the first in six years — did not go smoothly.
Voters in Minneapolis will decide whether to replace the city's police department with a Department of Public Safety.
Michelle Wu, a 36-year-old protégé of Elizabeth Warren, is favored to become the next mayor of Boston.

MORNING READS

Employers say there's a new boldness in the way Gen Z dictates taste.Jeff Hinchee

Generational friction: It's the millennials vs. Gen Z at work.

Wealth: Who are America's billionaires?

Modern Love: How 23andMe unraveled a family secret.

World Series: Braves fans are joyously defiant — against the Astros, the M.L.B. and most everyone else.

Advice from Wirecutter: Here's where to put your wet sponges.

Lives Lived: The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on the benefits of intense focus — a mental state he called "flow" — led to a global best seller and new ideas about the path to happiness. He died at 87.

ARTS AND IDEAS

The Village Halloween Parade in New York City.Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

A Halloween movie guide

In theaters: "Last Night in Soho," which explores the darker side of 1960s London, is a "sumptuous and surprising horror movie," Jeannette Catsoulis writes. In "Antlers," a wendigo — a man-eating creature from Algonquin folklore — terrorizes a small town. Or for something weird, there's "Lamb," an Icelandic film about a childless couple who adopt a creature.

Watch at home: "What We Do in the Shadows" is a mockumentary comedy film about ancient vampire housemates coping with modern life. For a scarier take on the faux-documentary, try the Thai film "The Medium," about a film crew in search of a female shaman. (Here are more streaming options.)

Family-friendly: "ParaNorman" is a "cuddly-creepy film" about a precocious boy, his ghostly friends and a looming zombie apocalypse, Erik Piepenburg writes.

And if you're in New York, here's a guide to Halloween festivities. — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

David Malosh for The New York Times

This winter squash and wild mushroom curry is comfort food.

Where to Go

The Three Capes area in Oregon offers rugged scenery and hidden beaches.

What to Read

Memoirs from Ai Weiwei, Huma Abedin and Will Smith are among new books to look forward to in November.

Late Night

The hosts talked about Biden's bill.

Take the News Quiz

Did you keep up with the headlines this week?

Now Time to Play

The pangram from yesterday's Spelling Bee was movably. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online.

Here's today's Mini Crossword, and a clue: Run away (four letters).

If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you Monday. — David

P.S. Jia Lynn Yang, editor of The Times's National desk, talked about what she values in journalism.

Here's today's print front page.

"The Daily" is about Biden's spending bill. "The Ezra Klein Show" focuses on the future of the right.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.