BIDEN PROPOSES SWEEPING VIRUS AID PACKAGE
$1.9T includes funding for vaccine deployment, unemployment, stimulus
WASHINGTON
President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday proposed a $1.9 trillion rescue package to combat the economic downturn and the COVID-19 crisis, outlining the type of sweeping aid that Democrats have demanded for months and signaling the shift in the federal government’s pandemic response as Biden prepares to take office.
The package includes more than $400 billion to combat the pandemic directly, including money to accelerate vaccine deployment and safely reopen most schools within 100 days. Another $350 billion would help state and local governments bridge budget shortfalls, while the plan would also include $1,400 direct pay
ments to individuals, more generous unemployment benefits, federally mandated paid leave for workers and large subsidies for child care costs.
“During this pandemic, millions of Americans, through no fault of their own, have lost the dignity and respect that comes with a job and a paycheck,” Biden said in a speech to the nation. “There is real pain overwhelming the real economy.”
He acknowledged the high price tag but said the nation could not afford to do anything less. “The very health of our nation is at stake,” Biden said. “We have to act, and we have to act now.”
Biden took swift action, seeking to shape the agenda at a time of national crisis and a day after President Donald Trump’s impeachment in the House. While it reflects the political shift in Washington as Democrats take control of Congress, support for Biden’s program will immediately run into logistical challenges, starting with the possibility that a Senate trial of Trump might delay its passage.
It is also unclear how easily Biden can secure enough votes for a plan of such ambition and expense, especially in the Senate. Democratic victories in two Georgia special elections last week gave Biden’s party control of the Senate — but only with a 5050 margin and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote. Biden will have to compensate for any defecting moderate Democrats with Republican votes at a time of scarce bipartisanship.
Biden suggested he would reach across party lines to get his package passed. “We need more action, more bipartisanship — and we need to move quickly,” he said.
His speech Thursday came at an incredibly challenging moment, as virus cases continue to climb — more than 229,000 new cases were reported in the U.S. on Wednesday — millions of workers remain sidelined, and America’s partisan divisions are threatening to deepen. A week after a mob stormed the Capitol to disrupt Congress’ certification of Biden’s win, Washington has come to resemble an armed camp, with steel barricades being erected across the city and armed law enforcement policing the streets.
The economic rebound from the pandemic recession has also reeled into reverse amid a winter surge of the virus and new waves of restrictions on economic activity in cities and states.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that 1.15 million Americans filed new unemployment claims in the first full week of the new year, a 25 percent increase from the previous week. Another 284,000 claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, an emergency federal program for workers like freelancers who do not normally qualify for jobless benefits. The nation shed 140,000 jobs in December, the department reported last week.
Biden aides said the package reflected the scope of the challenge facing the economy and the nation’s health system. In a briefing Thursday, one Biden official added that the existing national planning and infrastructure for mass vaccinations and testing was far less developed than the incoming White House team had anticipated.
Biden detailed his socalled American Rescue Plan in an evening speech in Delaware. The presidentelect struck an urgent, but optimistic tone, saying the United States could overcome its current challenges.
“Out of all the peril of this moment, I want you to know I see the promise,” Biden said. “I’m as optimistic as I’ve ever been.”
The plan was lauded by progressive groups as well as by the nation’s leading business lobby, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which was often at odds with the Obama administration over spending and regulations. “We applaud the presidentelect’s focus on vaccinations and on economic sectors and families that continue to suffer as the pandemic rages on,” the chamber said in a statement.
Republicans were largely silent on the plan, which includes the type of state and local aid that became a sticking point in last year’s stimulus negotiations. Congress was able to agree on a $900 billion package in December only after such aid was excluded. But Biden outlined his rationale for including such funding, saying it was vital to avoiding cutbacks and layoffs that would set back the fight against the virus and further damage the economy.
“Millions of people putting their lives at risk are the very people now at risk of losing their jobs: police officers, firefighters, all first responders, nurses, educators,” Biden said.
The Biden “rescue” proposal, which would be financed entirely through increased federal borrowing, flows from the idea that the virus and the recovery are intertwined.
Economists who have pushed for more federal aid for people and businesses said this week that Biden’s advisers understood that the focus needed to be on vaccine deployment in order to get the virus under control.
“What the economy needs is a successful rollout of the vaccines and reduction in the risks of social and economic activity,” said Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management who served in the White House Council of Economic Advisers under the Obama and Trump administrations. “That will go a long way toward promoting recovery.”
Biden, who has promised to get “100 million COVID vaccine shots into the arms of the American people” by his 100th day in office, said last week that he intended to release nearly all available coronavirus vaccine vials once he takes office, rather than holding some back as the Trump administration had been doing.
The $20 billion “national vaccine program” he announced Thursday envisions community vaccination centers around the country. In recent speeches, he has said he would like to see mass vaccination sites in high school gymnasiums, sports stadiums and the like.
Biden also called for a “public health jobs program” that would address his goals of bolstering the economy and the COVID-19 response while also rebuilding the nation’s fragile public health infrastructure. The proposal would fund 100,000 public health workers to engage in vaccine outreach and contact tracing.
His plan would provide emergency paid leave to 106 million Americans, a proposal that many congressional Republicans worked to pare back in a stimulus bill passed last spring, and it would extend tax credits to many families to offset up to $8,000 in annual child care costs.
It gives billions of dollars in aid to renters struggling to keep up with mounting unpaid liabilities to landlords, and it would give grants to millions of the hardest-hit small businesses. It also temporarily increases the size of two tax credits in a manner that would effectively provide more cash from the government to low-income workers and families. Biden transition officials said an expansion of the earned income tax credit and child tax credit would halve child poverty at a time when many low-income parents have lost work and are turning to food banks for help.
Biden also called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, and proposed extending expanded unemployment benefits through the end of September, with an extra $400 weekly supplement.
“We need more action, more bipartisanship — and we need to move quickly.”
President-elect Joe Biden