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The House is set to pass a roughly $2 trillion education, healthcare and climate package Friday, as Democrats corralled their slim majority to approve the centerpiece of President Biden’s economic agenda after months of wrangling, the Wall Street Journal reported. While the House vote would put Democrats closer to unifying their fractious centrist and progressive wings behind the bill, the party will still need to move the legislation through the evenly divided Senate. There, lawmakers are planning to change or pare back some of the bill’s provisions in the coming weeks. Democrats initially hoped to pass the bill Thursday night, but an hourslong speech by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) slamming the legislation prompted Democrats to postpone the vote until Friday after 8 a.m. Republicans have united against the bill, arguing that it would exacerbate rising inflation and slow the economy’s growth. The bill calls for creating a universal prekindergarten program, capping child-care costs for many families, negotiating lower prescription drug prices and expanding tax credits for reducing carbon emissions, among other programs. In addition to expanding tax-enforcement efforts at the Internal Revenue Service, the legislation raises taxes on some corporations and very high-income Americans.

A key U.S. House of Representative panel advanced legislation aimed at cracking down on special purpose acquisition companies, which has been one of the hottest markets on Wall Street in recent years, Bloomberg News reported. The House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Maxine Waters, cleared a proposal on Tuesday that would ban Wall Street from marketing blank-check companies to retail investors. Another bill that was approved would largely exclude SPACs from receiving a safe harbor that reduces their regulatory liability. SPACs, which are shell companies that list on public exchanges to raise money in order to buy profitable entities, are increasingly becoming a focus of lawmakers and regulators, including Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler. A top concern is that retail investors may be left holding the bag because so many SPACs have been started over the past few years that there may be few viable companies left for them to acquire. While the legislation faces long odds in the Senate, where Democrats hold a thin majority, any momentum on Capitol Hill could embolden regulators like Gensler to act. The SEC chair has laid out a list of dozens of rule proposals, including plans to increase disclosures for SPACs and corporate diversity.

President Joe Biden signed his $1 trillion infrastructure deal into law Monday on the White House lawn, the Associated Press reported. The president says that it will deliver jobs, clean water, high-speed internet and a clean energy future. In order to achieve a bipartisan deal, the president had to cut back his initial ambition to spend $2.3 trillion on infrastructure by more than half. The bill that becomes law on Monday in reality includes about $550 billion in new spending over 10 years, since some of the expenditures in the package were already planned. Biden also tried unsuccessfully to tie the infrastructure package to passage of a broader package of $1.85 trillion in proposed spending on families, health care and a shift to renewable energy that could help address climate change. That measure has yet to gain sufficient support from the narrow Democratic majorities in the Senate and House.

The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) sent a letter yesterday to Congress signed by 43 attorneys general in support of the Bankruptcy Venue Reform Act of 2021. H.R. 4193 was introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) on June 28 and its companion in the Senate, S. 2827, on Sept. 23 by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) aiming to end “forum shopping” and prevent corporations from choosing to file for bankruptcy in whichever district is believed to be more favorable. In the letter, the attorneys general contend that passage of the legislation will:

· Reduce forum shopping in the bankruptcy system. 
· Strengthen the integrity of, and build public confidence and ensure fairness in, the bankruptcy system.
· Help consumers and other parties to be represented in court without undue burden.
· Level the playing field for state attorneys general to guard their states’ financial interests and enforce consumer protection laws.

“In short, by ensuring that debtors whose operations have created adverse impacts on their neighbors are called to account in proximity to those same neighbors, H.R. 4193 and S. 2827 will greatly limit forum shopping while helping consumers and many other parties, large and small alike — including creditors, workers, retirees, shareholders, and small business vendors — to represent themselves without undue burden,” according to the letter. Read the letter here.

House lawmakers late Friday adopted a roughly $1.2 trillion measure to improve the country’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections, overcoming their own internecine divides to secure a long-sought burst in federal investment and deliver President Biden a major legislative win, the Washington Post reported. The bipartisan 228-to-206 vote marked the final milestone for the first of two pieces in the president’s sprawling economic agenda. The outcome sends to Biden’s desk an initiative that promises to deliver its benefits to all 50 states, a manifestation of his 2020 campaign pledge to rejuvenate the economy in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and “build back better.” The path to passage proved littered with political conflict, pushing to the limits a fractious party with still-widening ideological fissures. Democrats initially hoped to approve the infrastructure bill on Friday along with a separate, roughly $2 trillion proposal to overhaul the nation’s health care, education, immigration, climate and tax laws. Doing so would have advanced two spending initiatives that have been stalled on Capitol Hill for months.

The timetable for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bring up Democrats’ health care, education and climate package slipped to Friday after lawmakers hit snags on immigration and the state and local tax deduction, the Wall Street Journal reported. The California Democrat initially told House Democrats in a closed-door meeting yesterday that she hoped the House would vote on the bill later that day, then vote on the Senate-passed infrastructure bill on Friday. Progressives have been blocking the roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill until they are satisfied with the language in the social-spending and climate-change bill. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said late yesterday that the House would instead take up both pieces of legislation as soon as today, again pushing back on Democrats’ efforts to advance much of President Biden’s agenda through Congress. While the infrastructure bill would go to Mr. Biden for his signature after House passage, the nearly $2 trillion health care, education and climate bill will face likely changes in the Senate.

The House Judiciary yesterday favorably reported (23-17) H.R. 4777, the "Nondebtor Release Prohibition Act of 2021," introduced by House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), out of committee. The legislation now goes to the full House of Representatives, where the timeline for consideration by the full chamber is unclear. Nadler, in a press release, said that the legislation would limit tactics known as nondebtor stays and injunctions, which allow a nondebtor to avail itself of the "benefits of the bankruptcy process without assuming the obligations and procedural safeguards associated with bankruptcy." Under the bill, nonconsensual preliminary stays and injunctions could only last up to 90 days. "Finally, the legislation limits the use of so-called 'divisional mergers' — which allow a corporation to shield its assets from its victims and other creditors." Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee objected the proposal, according to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy, saying during the mark-up hearing yesterday that the bill might impair companies’ ability to restructure significant liabilities in chapter 11 or restrict judges’ flexibility in ultimately deciding if a troubled company can be revived and jobs preserved. The Senate Judiciary has not considered the Senate companion bill (S. 2497 introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)), and the proposal still faces challenges given the slim majorities in the House and Senate.

Click here to read the full text of the bill. 

Click here to read Nadler's press release. 

House Democrats aren’t planning to include a measure raising the U.S. debt ceiling as part of President Joe Biden’s estimated $1.75 trillion tax-and-social-spending bill, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said, Bloomberg News reported. The stance would remove one avenue for averting a showdown with Republicans over the debt ceiling in the coming months that could lead to the U.S. missing payments to workers, beneficiaries or bondholders. Republicans led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have vowed not to cooperate on another short-term debt-ceiling suspension as they did last month and say Democrats must raise the limit on their own given their significant spending plans. Adding a debt-ceiling increase to the Biden bill, which may see a House vote this week, could have resolved any uncertainty over a potential U.S. payment default sometime between December and February. Under Senate rules, the budget reconciliation vehicle that Democrats are using to advance Biden’s economic agenda could also be used to raise the debt ceiling. Addressing the issue in this way would let Democrats, if they stay unified, pass the measure without any Republican votes and avoid a GOP filibuster.