Biden Meets With CEOs To Promote Stalled Build Back Better Bill
President Joe Biden met with CEOs from 10 major U.S. companies Wednesday to promote Build Back Better, a spending bill that has stalled in the Senate.
Ford CEO Jim Farley told Yahoo Finance that the Build Back Better bill is “mission critical for the [electric vehicle] industry.” Experts have noted that the bill's tax credits for the purchase of electric vehicles are crucial to the fate of the industry.
Other CEOs attending the meeting included General Motors’ Mary Barra, Etsy’s Josh Silverman, Microsoft’s Brad Smith and Hewlett-Packard's Enrique Lores. All 10 CEOs attending the meeting support the Build Back Better bill, according to the White House.
The bill will promise $12,500 in credits for consumers if they buy an EV and help develop more chargers for EVs across the U.S.
Biden has aimed for having half of the new vehicles sold by 2030 to be electric.
The $2.2 trillion bill passed in the Democrat-controlled House, but the price tag has since dropped to $1.75 trillion and has been stalled in the Senate over concerns about price and inflation.
Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., along with the entire Republican party have not backed the bill.
The focus of the event was on what Build Back Better would do for businesses. However, CNBC noted that for the past year business groups have opposed the bill, which would raise corporate tax rates and impose a minimum tax on profits.
Biden has said that he thinks Democrats “can break the package up, get as much as we can now and come back and fight for the rest of it.”
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