Biden agenda faces big test as Senate gets bill
WASHINGTON - 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 Saturday to pass the sweeping pandemic aid measure only underscored the depth of partisan division over the proposal, which was opposed by every Republican. The president’s vision for infusing cash across a struggling economy to individuals, businesses, schools, states and cities battered by COVID-19 passed on a near party-line 219-212 vote.
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. We can finally get our economy moving again. People in this country have suffered far too much for too long.”
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.
The Senate is split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris controlling the tiebreaking vote.