DIVIDED SENATE TAKES UP RELIEF BILL
Harris breaks tie, allowing chamber to debate package
The Senate voted by the slimmest of margins Thursday to begin debating a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, after Democrats made changes aimed at ensuring they could pull President Joe Biden’s top legislative priority through the precariously divided chamber.
Democrats were hoping for Senate approval of the package before next week, in time for the House to sign off and get the measure to Biden quickly. They were encountering opposition from Republicans arguing that the measure’s massive price tag ignored promising signs that the pandemic and wounded economy were turning around.
Democratic leaders made over a dozen late additions to their package, reflecting their need to cement unanimous support from all their senators — plus Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote — to succeed in the 50-50 chamber. It’s expected the Senate will approve the bill and the House will whisk it to Biden for his signature by mid-March, handing him an early legislative victory.
The Senate’s 51-50 vote to start debating the package, with Harris pushing Democrats over the top, underscored how they were navigating the package through Congress with virtually no margin for error. In the House, their majority is just 10 votes.
The bill, aimed at battling the killer virus and nursing the staggered economy back to health, will provide
direct payments of up to $1,400 to most Americans. There’s also money for COVID-19 vaccines and testing, aid to state and local governments, help for schools and the airline industry, tax breaks for lowerearners and families with children, and subsidies for health insurance.
“We are not going to be timid in the face of a great challenge,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
The new provisions offered items appealing to all manner of Democrats. Progressives
got money boosting feeding programs, federal subsidies for health care for workers who lose jobs, tax-free student loans, and money for public broadcasting and consumer protection investigations.
Moderates won funds for rural health care, language assuring minimum amounts of money for smaller states and a prohibition on states receiving aid using the windfalls to cut taxes. And for everyone, there was money for infrastructure, cultural venues, startup companies and afterschool programs.
Even with the late revisions, there was a good chance lawmakers will make yet another one and vote to pare back the bill’s $400 weekly emergency unemployment benefits to $300.
That potential change could also extend those emergency payments another month, through September. It was described by aides and a lobbyist who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.
Biden and Senate leaders had agreed Wednesday to retain the $400 weekly jobless
payments included in the version of the relief bill the House approved Saturday. The reduction to $300 — which seemed likely to occur once the Senate begins a “vote-a-rama” on scores of amendments later this week — seemed to ref lect a need to secure support from moderate Democrats.
It also left House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, the task of keeping her chamber’s numerous progressives on board. Liberals already suffered a blow when their No. 1 priority — a federal minimum wage increase to $15 hourly that was included in the House package — was booted from the bill in the Senate for violating the chamber’s rules and for lack of moderates’ support.
In another bargain that satisfied moderates, Biden and Senate Democrats agreed Wednesday to tighten eligibility for the direct checks to individuals. The new provision completely phases out the $1,400 payments for individuals earning at least $80,000 and couples making $160,000, well lower than the original ceilings.
“My hope is they don’t screw around with it too much,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said of the Senate in an interview. “If they do, there could be some problems.”
Congress wants to send the bill to Biden before March 14, when a previous round of emergency benefits for people tossed out of work by the pandemic expires.
As soon as the Senate began considering the bill, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., forced the chamber’s clerks to begin reading the entire 628page measure aloud. He said earlier that he was doing it to “shine the light on this abusive and obscene amount of money.”
Schumer said Johnson would “accomplish little more than a few sore throats for the Senate clerks.”
Asked about GOP delays, Biden told reporters he’s talked to Republican lawmakers and added, “We’re keeping everybody informed.” Biden met last month with Republican senators who offered a plan one-third the size of Democrats’ proposal, and there have been no signs since of serious talks.
President Joe Biden tried to maintain bipartisan momentum for a new infrastructure program by meeting Thursday with Republican and Democratic lawmakers at the White House.
The meeting was about “what we’re gonna do to make sure we once again lead the world across the board on infrastructure,” Biden said. “It not only creates jobs, but it makes us a helluva lot more competitive around the world if we have the best infrastructure.”
Spending on infrastructure appears to be the next major priority for the Biden administration after its $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package clears the Senate, likely along hardened partisan lines. The prospect of funding roads, bridges, ports, broadband and other infrastructure is a chance for Biden to rebuild his relationship
with Republicans. It also allows him the chance to notch a policy achievement that evaded both the Obama and Trump administrations.
Biden met Thursday with eight members of the House Committee on Transportation
and Infrastructure, a follow-up to a Feb. 11 meeting with senators on infrastructure.
The president laid the groundwork for an infrastructure package during last year’s campaign by proposing $2 trillion in “accelerated”
investments to shift to cleaner energy, build charging stations for electric vehicles, support public transit and repair roads and bridges. The plan emphasizes the importance of addressing climate change and creating unionized jobs.
There is a need for infrastructure spending. The American Society of Civil Engineers on Wednesday graded the nation’s infrastructure as a lackluster “C-.” The group said $5.9 trillion must be spent over the next decade for safe and sustainable roads, bridges and airports. That recommendation is about $2.6 trillion more than what the government and private sector spend.
Republicans say they want to invest in infrastructure, but they appear to disagree with Biden’s focus on the environment and the possibility of financing any program with debt after the federal government has already borrowed heavily to combat the economic fallout from the pandemic. Their concern is that infrastructure would ultimately become a form of the Democratic-proposed “Green New Deal” that would move the country away from fossil fuels.
Missouri Rep. Sam Graves, the ranking Republican on the transportation committee, left the meeting Thursday with a series of markers for Biden to win bipartisan backing.
“First and foremost, a highway bill cannot grow into a multitrillion-dollar catchall bill, or it will lose Republican support,” Graves said in a statement. “Second, a transportation bill needs to be a transportation bill that primarily focuses on fundamental transportation needs, such as roads and bridges. Republicans won’t support another Green New Deal disguising itself as a transportation bill.”
Still, the committee chairman, Oregon Democrat Pete DeFazio, described the meeting with Biden as productive and refreshing after conversations with former President Donald Trump led to minimal progress on infrastructure. DeFazio said they discussed paying for the plan, but he declined to go into specifics.
“The difference between talking to Joe Biden about infrastructure and what goes into it and how we’re going to get it done and Donald Trump is like, it’s just a whole different world,” DeFazio said. “It’s way better.”