Biden proposes $1.9 trillion plan for pandemic, economic crisis
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe
Biden proposed a $1.9 trillion plan to combat the nation's economic and public health emergencies, as he began to raise the curtain on a new presidency built on faith in the power of the federal government to help solve problems.
In a speech to the nation Thursday night, Biden called for quick congressional action on his sweeping package, which will include steps to speed production and distribution of vaccines, an additional $1,400 in direct payments to individuals, an increased minimum wage, expanded unemployment benefits, aid to state and local governments and an expansion of aid to families with children.
“We have to act and we have to act now,” Biden said. “The very health of our nation is at stake.”
Biden cast the plan as an immediate response to a continuing pandemic and an economic crisis that is worsening as already high unemployment rates have once again started to rise after months of declines from record levels in the spring.
Many of the proposals, however, also serve as down payments toward longer-run Democratic goals, including a oneyear expansion of aid to families with children, which Biden said would “cut child poverty in half ” over the next year.
The effort to do both comes with a big price tag — more than twice the $908 billion in relief Congress approved last month. That will make it a tough sell in a narrowly divided Senate where Republicans have tremendous power to slow or block legislation even though Democrats will hold the majority.
But Biden argued that spending now would put the economy on a sounder foundation for renewed growth.
“I know what I just described does not come cheaply,” he said. “But failure to do so will cost us dearly.”
A senior Biden official said the president-elect and his aides hoped that his speech would begin to build public support for the plan.
“The strategy is to make the case clearly to the American people about the immediacy of the need, and to work to try to build on the spirit of bipartisanship that helped to bring together action in December,” the official said, referring to the relief approved last month. “But that was just a down payment. And so we're going to need to work to do more.”