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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowHouse Democrats moved toward passage Wednesday of legislation setting the stage for party-line approval of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, heeding Biden’s calls for swift action even as Republicans accused them of ignoring the president’s promises of bipartisanship.
House passage of the budget bill Wednesday evening is expected to be followed by Senate action on the same bill later in the week. The legislation would unlock special rules in the Senate allowing Biden’s relief package to pass with a simple majority vote, instead of the 60 votes usually needed.
That means Democrats could pass Biden’s package without any Republican votes, though they continued to insist that is not their preference.
Biden himself said Wednesday that “I think we’ll get some Republicans.” Biden made the remark as he prepared to meet in the Oval Office with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the Senate committee chairmen who will be responsible for writing the actual relief legislation into law.
Earlier Wednesday Biden addressed House Democrats on a conference call, telling them: “We need to act … We need to act fast,” according to two people on the call who spoke on condition of anonymity to relay his comments.
“It’s about who the hell we are as a country,” Biden told House Democrats.
The so-called “budget reconciliation” bills passing this week simply set spending levels for committees and instruct them to report back with legislation, so the real fights over the contents of the package are still to come. Those are likely to be fierce, even if it’s just Democrats fighting among themselves, because Democrats have a very narrow majority in the House and the Senate is split 50-50 between the parties, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote giving Democrats the majority.
Biden’s plan includes an array of proposals including $1,400 stimulus checks, an increase and extension of unemployment benefits that are set to expire in mid-March, an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, some $350 billion for cities and states, around $130 billion for schools, and $160 billion for vaccines, testing and other help for the health care system.
In debate on the House floor, Republicans took turns criticizing Democrats and Biden for choosing to go down a partisan path after Biden campaigned on promises to make bipartisan deals and unify the nation. They criticized his relief package as a wish list of liberal packages disguised as a COVID-19 relief bill.
“Democrats in Washington are setting up a partisan process to have the vice president cast the decisive vote in the Senate on an array of radical policies,” said Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), top Republican on the House Budget Committee. “Their plans are to try to use this pandemic to seize more government control of your life.”
Democrats countered that Republicans have not offered solutions to meet the needs of the country at a time of continued high unemployment, with more funding for vaccines urgently needed as variants of the coronavirus emerge.
“We cannot afford to slow down our response to these urgent crises while Republicans decide if they want to help or not,” said House Budget Chairman John Yarmuth, D-Ky.
Biden earlier this week met with a group of 10 Senate Republicans who offered a $620 billion counter-proposal to his $1.9 trillion plan. Democrats have panned the GOP plan as inadequate, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki started the White House briefing on Wednesday by emphasizing the differences between the Republican plan and Biden’s. She pointed out that Biden’s plan would offer larger stimulus payments and unemployment benefits that would last through the fall instead of expiring during the summer like the GOP plan, among other differences.
Psaki also criticized a new study by The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania that found more than 70 percent of the stimulus payments would be saved rather than spent. Psaki called that analysis “way out of step with the majority of studies,” citing research from the Brookings Institution and JP Morgan.
Psaki said Biden’s stimulus had bipartisan support because it was backed by most Republican voters, despite appearing to be rejected by all congressional Republicans.
Pressed on whether the amount of state and local aid in the bill was up for negotiation, Psaki said the White House would welcome an offer from Senate Republicans, noting the plan from 10 GOP lawmakers included no additional state relief.
Psaki said the income threshold for the $1,400 stimulus payments remains “under discussion” and had not been finalized. “Further targeting means not the size of the check; it means the income level of people who receive the check.”
Congress has already devoted some $4 trillion to fighting the pandemic through a series of five bipartisan bills last year, including a $900 billion measure passed in December.
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