House expected to pass
Biden’s COVID relief
The House was slated to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package late Friday night, even as a cloud of uncertainty remained over a key provision in the colossal bill that would boost the federal minimum wage.
The Biden legislation — which bankrolls $1,400 stimulus checks to most Americans, beefed-up unemployment benefits, billions of dollars for coronavirus vaccination efforts and budgetary relief for struggling state governments, among a range of other aid — was headed to the House floor for a final dead-of-night vote after lawmakers worked late into the evening to get it through procedural hoops.
Democrats, who control the House, were expected to approve the bill in a virtual party-line vote, with Republicans unanimously opposed to spending more money on helping pandemic-ravaged workers, businesses and states.
“The sooner we pass the bill and it is signed, the sooner we can make the progress that this legislation is all about: saving the lives and the livelihoods of the American people,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters.
After House passage, the bill would head to the Senate, where Democrats are looking to approve it for a final signature from Biden before March 14, when federal unemployment aid enhancements and other pandemic relief programs are set to expire.
However, a complicated process will ensue once the bill hits the Senate because of an 11th-hour curveball thrown by Elizabeth MacDonough, the chamber’s nonpartisan parliamentarian.
MacDonough ruled late Thursday that a provision in the bill to bump the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15-per-hour must be taken out because she found it violated a budgetary process known as reconciliation that Democrats adopted in order to pass the legislation without Republican support.
House Democrats kept the wage raise provision in the version of the bill they were expected to pass Friday night, but the Senate will by all indications have to remove it.
Though Vice President Kamala Harris can overrule parliamentary decisions, White House officials said she will not do so out of “respect” for Senate procedure, all but certainly meaning MacDonough’s ruling will stand.
Even if Harris were to act, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a couple of moderate Democrats, have said they do not support overriding the parliamentarian, meaning they may not vote in favor of the stimulus bill if the minimum wage hike somehow ended up in there.
Meantime, Senate Democrats likely can’t afford to lose any support from their own members, since the chamber’s 50 Republicans are, like their House counterparts, overwhelmingly opposed to appropriating more relief.
Though she said Biden’s “disappointed” by MacDonough’s finding, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki suggested Congress should revisit the minimum wage piece in future legislation and quickly pass the other portions of the stimulus package, like direct payments, small business aid and relief for the millions who remain unemployed because of the deadly pandemic.
Progressive Democrats, who have pushed for a minimum wage boost for over a decade, were disappointed Harris is opting against overruling MacDonough.
“I know that going back to my family’s community in the Bronx and in Queens, we can’t tell them that this didn’t get done because of an unelected parliamentarian,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Capitol Hill.
“I think all options should be on the table,” Ocasio-Cortez added when asked if she believes MacDonough should be replaced with someone who’s willing to give the minimum wage boost the green
A New Jersey man who bragged online about storming the U.S. Capitol in the name of Donald Trump told friends he’d urinated in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional office during the riots — and regretted not leaving “s—-” on her chair when he had the chance, according to federal documents unsealed Friday.
Friends of James Douglas Rahm, 61, turned him in to the FBI after reading his incriminating posts on Facebook following the Jan. 6 violence that left one Capitol police officer and several rioters dead.
Rahm (photo) soon deleted most of the posts and videos — but not before his friends took screenshots of most of his comments, including those about Pelosi (D-Calif.), according to documents filed in a Pennsylvania federal court.
“[Riot] shields and pepper spray never hurt anyone did they? Home alive. History made. I walked through Pelosi’s office. I should have s-— on her chair,” Rahm, an Atlantic City resident, wrote in one Facebook post, the FBI said.
Under a comment suggesting he go back inside the building and “[give] Pelosi a kiss,” Rahm writes: “Pissed in her office,” followed by a thumbs-up emoji, court docs show.
“We’re in. We’re taking our f—-ing house back. We’re here. Time to find some brass and kick some frickin’ ass,” Rahm says in one video, which he took inside the Capitol during deadly melee, according to the feds.
In another screenshot provided to the FBI, Rahm captioned a photo of himself standing outside the U.S. Capitol, eyes looking red and puffy: “the pepper spray is just wearing off.”
Aside from his online activity, Rahm was pictured at the Capitol in surveillance footage, and in other photos, the feds said.
The FBI arrested Rahm on Feb. 5, and charged him with violent obstruction of Congress, knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building, and other related charges.
He was released on $100,000 bail.
Prosecutors filed Rahm’s case in Pennsylvania, but he will be tried in Washington D.C., like all the others arrested for their alleged roles in the Capitol violence.