News
Washington DC
Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee have agreed to $3.5trn in spending for their healthcare and anti-poverty plan while the party controls Congress and the White House, say Andrew Duehren and Kristina Peterson in The Wall Street Journal. The party now hopes to push the bill through the Senate without Republican support using a process designed to expedite budgetary legislation called “reconciliation”. The plan is also expected to include tax increases on corporations and wealthy Americans. The US Federal Reserve, meanwhile, is finding it “increasingly difficult” to claim that higher inflation is “transitory” due to “another blowout” reading for June, says James Knightley of bank ING. Annual headline inflation is now running at 5.4%, “just below the 2008 oil-price spike induced peak of 5.6%”. The annual rate of core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, is
