Vox Sentences - BBB passes the House

After months of wrangling, the House of Representatives passes the Build Back Better Act; Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi concedes to farmers after a year of protests.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

Finally, Democrats' social spending bill passes the House

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

• The US House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better Act, the $1.85 trillion social spending bill that is the centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda. It now goes to an evenly divided Senate, where it faces an uphill battle to please both centrist and progressive members. [NBC/ Christina Wilkie]
• The bill passed narrowly, 220-213, and includes provisions for universal pre-K, tax increases on corporations and the wealthy, and $555 billion to mitigate climate change. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine was the only Democrat to vote against the bill, saying he was hoping to see edits to the bill in the Senate. [WSJ / Andrew Duehren and Richard Rubin]
• Other moderate Democrats expressed anxiety over the bill’s impact on the nation’s deficit and how it would be paid for, saying they wanted to wait on the Congressional Budget Office’s report to decide whether to vote for the bill. The CBO estimate, released Thursday, said the legislation would cost $1.63 trillion, while raising more than $1.26 trillion in revenue due to tax code changes and other measures; an additional $207 billion in revenue would come from increased IRS enforcement. [CBS / Sarah Ewall-Wice, Kathryn Watson, Caroline Linton, and Melissa Quinn]
• House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy held up the vote on the bill with a speech that lasted more than eight hours — the longest continuous speech in modern House history. While the House doesn’t have an equivalent of the Senate’s filibuster, McCarthy took advantage of the so-called “magic minute,” which lets House leaders talk as long as they want in debate. [NYT / Emily Cochrane and Jonathan Weisman]
• But the bill passed anyway, just before 10 am Washington time on Friday. Many of the measures, however, have been greatly reduced or, like a provision for free community college, eliminated due to major disagreements within the Democratic Party. [Politico / Heather Caygle, Sarah Ferris, and Nicholas Wu]
• The bill still awaits Senate revisions, although those won’t happen until after the Thanksgiving recess. Then, if it passes the Senate, it will likely go back to the House for approval of the changes before it goes to Biden’s desk for a signature. [Axios / Andrew Solender and Sarah Mucha]

A surprise win for Indian farmers as Modi backs off controversial laws

• Nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has agreed to repeal three laws targeting the agricultural sector, after a year of large-scale protests by the nation’s farmers. It’s a rare reversal for Modi, whose strongman tactics typically quash internal dissent. [NYT / Emily Schmall, Karan Deep Singh, and Sameer Yasir]
• The laws, introduced last September, deregulated the agriculture market and allowed farmers to sell outside of government wholesale markets, which assured the farmers a minimum price for their goods. That caused widespread concern among farmers that they would experience price cuts and ignited the protests. [Reuters / Mayank Bhardwaj and Rajendra Jadhav]
• Despite Modi’s promise to roll back the legislation, protest leaders have promised to keep protesting until the laws are actually repealed. Parliament is set to repeal the laws in its next session, which starts in December. [AP / Sheikh Saaliq and Krutika Pathi]
• Modi likely had political reasons for backing off the legislation, given next year’s elections in the states of Uttar Pradesh, the country’s agricultural center and most populous state, and Punjab, home to the Sikh farmers who were instrumental in organizing the protests. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, has faced criticism over its lackluster Covid-19 response, as well as increasingly strident Hindu nationalist policies. [Washington Post / Gerry Shih and Niha Masih]
• Many farmers and protesters have died due to suicide, exposure, and starvation; in October, a car owned by the son of a government minister also allegedly ran over and killed at least four protesters. [Al Jazeera]

Help keep Sentences Free

The FDA has authorized Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccine boosters for all American adults; the CDC’s expert advisory panel recommends authorizing boosters for Americans over 18 and urges those 50 and older to get an additional shot. [AP / Lauran Neergaard, Matthew Perrone, and Mike Stobbe]

• Austria will implement a full national lockdown November 22, in light of increasing Covid cases, and will move to put a national vaccine mandate in place in February. [NYT / Jason Horowitz and Melissa Eddy]
• President Biden announced he will replace USPS board chair Ron Bloom and one other board member, both allies of Postmaster Louis DeJoy, signaling that DeJoy’s days may be numbered. [Washington Post / Jacob Bogage]
• Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has disappeared after accusing a former vice premier, Zhang Gaoli, of sexual assault — just months before Beijing is set to host the Winter Olympics. [BuzzFeed / David Mack]

What country with a five-letter name has Patrice Talon as its leader?

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“I was so scared that afternoon. I never gave consent, crying the entire time. I felt like a walking corpse.”

[Tennis star Peng Shuai’s last message on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, alleging sexual assault by former government official Zhang Gaoli]

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