By Sam Ozer-Staton

The Democrats’ massive proposed spending bill, which they hope to pass with just 50 votes in the Senate through budget reconciliation, has turned into a political tug-of-war between the progressive and moderate wings of the party. And the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“The problem now is this may be the last train leaving the station for a long time,” Jason Furman, an economist who chaired President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, told the New York Times this week. “It could be five, 10, 20 years before there’s another shot at a lot of these issues.”

While most of the media coverage has been dedicated to the overall cost of the bill and the palace intrigue of the personalities involved (“what does Joe Manchin want?”), there has also been substantive disagreement over policy. One particularly wonky debate — that has so far been largely absent from the headlines — has to do with housing equity.