Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Relief bill set to get final vote in House
Democrats plan for passage today
WASHINGTON — The House is poised to vote on a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill today, aiming for an early legislative achievement for President Joe Biden and the Democrats who control Congress.
Despite united GOP opposition and a narrow Democratic majority, House Democratic leaders expressed confidence Tuesday that they will have votes to spare. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York said he was “110% confident” of success.
Democrats touted the breadth of the legislation, which they’ve begun to frame not just as a bill to attack the coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn, but as a generational anti-poverty measure.
“This legislation represents the boldest action taken on behalf of the American people since the Great Depression,” House Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Pete Aguilar of California said Tuesday.
“This is seismic legislation,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass.
Republicans are using much the same argument against the bill, saying it’s largely unconnected to the pandemic crisis.
“We know for sure that it includes provisions that are not targeted, they’re not temporary, they’re not related to covid, and it didn’t have to be this way,” said
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming. “We could have had a bill that was a fraction of the cost of this one; it could have gotten bipartisan approval and support.”
Final House passage of the legislation would come after the Senate approved the bill Saturday afternoon after an all-night session. Along the way, moderate Senate Democrats pushed some changes opposed by liberals in the House, including narrowing eligibility for $1,400 stimulus checks and keeping emergency federal unemployment benefits at their current $300-per-week level instead of increasing them to $400 per week, as initially proposed by Biden. A $15 minimum wage also was struck from the bill.
Nonetheless, leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus praised the bill, which Democratic leaders are calling a historic anti-poverty measure in part because of a boosted child tax credit that will provide a monthly benefit for many needy families. House Democrats are talking about trying to make that benefit permanent.
The legislation would also send $350 billion to cities and states; provide $130 billion to schools to help them reopen; and devote billions of dollars to a national vaccination program, expanded coronavirus testing, food stamps, rental assistance and more.
The House vote on the bill’s final passage comes before a prime-time speech Biden is planning for Thursday to mark the anniversary of the nation plunging into widespread shutdowns to combat the coronavirus pandemic, which has devastated the economy and killed more than 520,000 Americans. Although the economy has shown signs of rebounding, millions of people remain unemployed, with the poorest Americans hit hardest.
Not a single Republican in the House or the Senate has voted in favor of the legislation, a notable outcome for Biden’s first legislative venture given his campaign themes of unity and bipartisanship. But congressional Democrats say it’s bipartisan anyway, pointing to support from GOP mayors and other elected officials outside Washington.
“This is bipartisan legislation. … To me it is the best piece of bipartisan legislation that I’ve seen here in a long, long time,” said House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C.
Two House Democrats — Kurt Schrader of Oregon and Jared Golden of Maine — voted against the legislation when it first passed in the House, before it was sent to the Senate and changes were made that require a second House vote. Schrader has announced that he will vote in favor this time around, saying his concerns about the legislation’s size and scope are outweighed by the help he believes it will bring to people in his state.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., convened her leadership team for a news conference Tuesday afternoon to take a victory lap on the legislation before its passage.
“I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it,” Pelosi said.
NAMES ON CHECKS
The White House said Tuesday that Biden’s name would not appear on the $1,400 stimulus payments set to be sent out to millions of American families if the relief package gains approval, a reversal from the precedent set under President Donald Trump.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday that the payments approved under Biden would instead be signed by a career official at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, an office within the Department of Treasury.
Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin included Trump’s signature on the memo line of the payments approved in March 2020, and Trump signed a letter taking credit for the benefit.
Psaki said Tuesday that including Biden’s name on the checks would delay their disbursement, something that Treasury Department officials under Trump adamantly denied.
“We are doing everything in our power to expedite the payments and not delay them, which is why the president’s name will not appear on the memo line of this round of stimulus checks,” Psaki said at the briefing. “This is not about him.”
Psaki had previously declined to comment on whether Biden’s name would appear on the checks. Political strategists have said Trump benefited from putting his name on checks to millions of families, but Democrats condemned him when he did so, arguing the move amounted to politicizing the coronavirus relief package.
The majority of the stimulus payments are made via direct deposit to Americans’ bank accounts. But millions of checks still went out in the mail. From March to June of last year, the Internal Revenue Service sent about 35 million stimulus payments via paper checks. The IRS did not respond to requests for comment on precisely how many checks were sent with Trump’s name on them.
SAFETY NET
Biden is hoping that the government can enact the relief plan not only to stop a pandemic and jobs crisis but also to catapult the country forward to tackle deep issues of poverty, inequality and more.
“When I was elected, I said we were going to get the government out of the business of battling on Twitter and back in the business of delivering for the American people,” Biden said after the bill passed in the Senate on Saturday. “Of showing the American people that their government can work for them.”
Taken together, provisions in the 628-page bill add up to one of the largest enhancements to the social safety net in decades, pushing the country into uncharted territory.
“People have lost faith government can do good for them,” said Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer of New York, who spoke daily with Biden while ushering the bill through the Senate. Now, as vaccines become more available and other changes take place, “people are going to see that government actually is making their lives better — which is how Americans used to think of it, and we’ve gotten away from it.”
Wide in scope, Biden’s plan largely relies on existing health care and tax credits, rather than new programs, but it expands that standard fare in ambitious new ways that are designed to reach more people who are suffering during an unprecedented time.
“We haven’t done this before,” said Syracuse University economics professor Len Burman, a co-founder of the Tax Policy Center. “If it actually does work the way it does in theory and the economy is back at full employment in a year, that would be amazing. It would save a lot of hardship and suffering.”
But Burman also has misgivings about the design of Biden’s relief package because it distributes direct payments and other benefits to almost every household in the United States, rather than directing the money to the poor and to businesses and organizations most damaged by the pandemic and ensuing shutdowns.
“It kind of reminded me of this idea when I was in grad school of helicopter money — which was basically dropping money from the air and seeing if it raised incomes,” he said. “The money could have been better targeted.”
The House aims to pass the bill before expanded unemployment benefits are set to expire mid-March. But Biden’s signing celebration will just be the start. His administration will have to show that the funds can be spent effectively and efficiently, helping those in need while giving the broader public enough confidence to awaken growth through hiring and spending.
Felicia Wong, CEO of the liberal Roosevelt Institute, sees parallels to the Great Depression, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought about an unprecedented series of government interventions that realigned U.S. politics. Wong said she is monitoring the process by which the money from the covid-19 relief package gets distributed.
“That’s going to matter as much as the scale of the package because it’s going to build trust,” Wong said.