Biden’s agenda facing a momentous test
Stimulus measure heads to an evenly divided Senate
President Joe Biden’s agenda is facing its most consequential test as Democrats prepare to maneuver his $1.9 trillion stimulus package through the evenly divided Senate, an effort that could strain the fragile alliance between progressives and centrists and the limits of his power in Congress.
An early-morning House vote to pass the sweeping pandemic aid measure only underscored the depth of partisan division over the proposal, which was opposed by every Republican. But the road ahead in the Senate is far bumpier, with
a thicket of arcane rules and a one-vote margin of control threatening to imperil crucial aspects of the plan as Democrats rush to deliver it to Biden’s desk within two weeks. already, Biden’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 as part of the plan has run aground because of budgetary rules for the measure, which Democrats are advancing under a complex process that allows it to pass by simple majority vote, bypassing Republican opposition.
In the week ahead, they will also face challenges in steering other aspects of the bill through procedural obstacles and around political pitfalls, including debates over how much to spend on closing state and local budget shortfalls and how to distribute expanded tax benefits aimed at helping impoverished families.
The challenge for Biden will be holding both sides together in the face of unified Republican opposition to secure a bill that White House officials believe will cushion vulnerable Americans through the end of the pandemic and turbo-boost the economy as it reopens in full.
“We have no time to waste,” Biden said Saturday at the White House.
“If we act now, decisively, quickly and boldly, we can finally get ahead of this virus.”
Progressives are pushing hard for party leaders to change Senate rules to keep the wage increase in the bill, arguing that Democrats must not scale back their ambitions for Biden’s first major legislative package.
The debate over the minimum wage, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, D -N.Y., told reporters,
“sets the stage for how effective we’ll be for the rest of the term.”
But moderates including Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona want to keep Senate rules — which effectively require 60 votes to advance most major legislation — intact and are opposed to including such a sharp increase in the minimum wage in the package.
Party leaders and White House officials remain confident that Biden has the votes, no matter the fate of the wage increase. All but two House Democrats voted for the legislation, called the American Rescue Plan, which has broad bipartisan support among voters. But congressional Republicans have united against it after being effectively frozen out of drafting the bill.
“The House’s partisan vote reflects a deliberately partisan process and a missed opportunity to meet Americans’ needs,” Sen. Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., the minority leader, said in a statement.
The measure now moves to the Senate, which is split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris controlling the tiebreaking vote. Biden’s early attempts to find common ground with moderate Republican senators yielded only general expressions of bipartisan aspiration, with the Republicans proposing a plan amounting to less than one-third of what the president is asking to address the crisis that has left 10 million Americans jobless.
With unemployment benefits set to begin lapsing March 14 for the workers who have been out of work the longest in the crisis, Democrats have only two weeks to finish the package in the Senate and resend it to the House and Biden’s desk. Because party leaders decided to use a fast-track budget process to swiftly move the legislation and circumvent Republican opposition in the Senate, the bill will need to comply with a series of strict budgetary rules along the way.
While the House included the federal minimum wage increase in the version it passed Saturday, a key Senate official warned that it violates the reconciliation rules, enabling Republicans to challenge it and jettison it from the package. It is likely more changes to the bill will be needed to ensure it complies with Senate rules and can draw support of every Democrat.
Senate Democrats are spending the weekend plotting ways to salvage the minimum wage provision, which would gradually increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2025.