On The Money: House Democrats break internal impasse to adopt $3.5T budget plan

Happy Tuesday and welcome back to On The Money. I’m Sylvan Lane, and here’s your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line.

See something I missed? Let me know at slane@digital-stage.thehill.com or tweet me @SylvanLane. And if you like your newsletter, you can subscribe to it here: http://bit.ly/1NxxW2N.

Write us with tips, suggestions and news: slane@digital-stage.thehill.com and njagoda@digital-stage.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @SylvanLane and @NJagoda.

THE BIG DEAL—House Democrats break internal impasse to adopt $3.5T budget plan: House Democrats on Tuesday rallied behind a new strategy to advance President Biden’s economic agenda shortly after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) struck a deal with a small group of moderates that was threatening to blow up leadership’s carefully laid plans to pass trillions of dollars in federal spending.

What happened: 

• The House voted 220-212, strictly along party lines, to adopt a rule that allows Democrats to immediately begin work on a massive $3.5 trillion social benefits package. 
• The rule also requires the lower chamber to take up the Senate-passed bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill by Sept. 27.

What it means for the road ahead: The deal Pelosi reached Tuesday provides a brief detente between Democratic moderates and progressives as House lawmakers leave Washington to resume their summer recess. But the sniping over process, strategy and timing foreshadows just how difficult it will be for the party to stay united when it comes to turning its policy goals into law in the coming weeks as it seeks to show voters that they can govern. The Hill’s Cristina Marcos and Scott Wong tell us why here.

The next steps:

• Pelosi has asked many of her committee chairmen to begin working on relevant parts of the gigantic spending package and report back to House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) by Sept. 15. 
• The Budget panel would then package everything together and prepare it for a floor vote when the chamber is scheduled to return to Washington in late September.

Pelosi added in a statement that she is “committing” to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill by Sept. 27, shortly before current surface transportation programs expire.

LEADING THE DAY

New home sales tick higher as prices hit record highs: New home sales edged higher in July while prices climbed to another record high, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau.

• Sales of new single-family homes rose 1 percent in July to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 708,000, up from 701,000 in June. 
• The median sale price for a single-family home rose to $390,500, and the average price reached $446,000 — each a new record.
• The inventory of new homes for sale rose 5.5 percent to 367,000 in the fastest one-month increase since November 2008, but construction has not yet started on a record 29 percent of those homes.

A surge of demand for new homes unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic drove both sales and prices to staggering levels in 2020. Sales cooled off slightly this spring as prices continued to surge, but a severe lack of inventory and building supply backlogs have kept costs for new homes high.

I break it down here.

Child tax credit payments would up average monthly income for HUD-assisted families by about 38 percent, report says: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) says in a new report that advance payments of the expanded child tax credit would increase the average monthly income for families receiving its assistance by almost 38 percent. 

In an analysis of the credit’s impact on HUD-assisted families obtained by The Hill on Monday, the agency estimated that, over the course of the current six-month disbursement period, payments that total to an average of about $3,300 per household would account for nearly 27.5 percent of a family’s total income over that period.

• Millions of families began receiving monthly payments as part of the credit expansion included in the President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief law that was enacted earlier this year.
• Under the expansion, the tax credit families can receive for children ages 6 to 17 was raised from $2,000 to $3,000, and for children under the age of 6 to $3,600. The law also allows low-income families to receive the funds immediately and requires the IRS to distribute payments from July to December.

The Hill’s Aris Folley has more here.

GOOD TO KNOW

• President Biden thanked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for her “masterful” leadership on Tuesday after House Democrats voted in lockstep to advance his economic agenda.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has reportedly started releasing new disclosure requirements for Chinese companies that want to list in New York, part of an effort to increase awareness among investors of risks that exist.
• Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is reassembling parts of his old playbook ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, hoping to garner more support for Democrats’ economic agenda in Republican states. 

ODDS AND ENDS

• Walt Disney World will require union employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus to keep their jobs, according to a union that represents Disney staffers.
• Op-Ed: “Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole dilemma”