Relief bill stalls as Democrats bicker
Washington — Democrats set aside one battle over boosting the minimum wage but promptly descended into another internal fight Friday as the party haltingly tried moving its $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill through the Senate.
Hours after asserting they’d reached a deal between party moderates and progressives over renewing emergency jobless benefits, lawmakers said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., was apparently ready to support a less generous Republican version. Work on the Senate floor ceased for over eight hours as Democrats sought a way to salvage their unemployment provision.
Manchin is probably the chamber’s most conservative Democrat, and a kingmaker in a 50-50 Senate that leaves his party without a vote to spare. With Democrats’ slim majorities — they have a mere 10-vote House edge — the party needs his vote but can’t tilt too far center without losing progressive support.
The episode tossed fresh complications into the Democrats’ drive to give quick approval to a relief bill that is President Joe Biden’s top legislative goal. And while they still seemed likely to pass the package, the problem underscored the headaches confronting party leaders over the next two years as they try moving their agenda through Congress with such slender margins.
“People in the country are hurting right now, with less than two weeks from enhanced unemployment checks being cut,” Biden said at the White House, referring to the March 14 end to the current round of emergency jobless benefits. He called his bill a “clearly necessary lifeline for getting the upper hand” against the pandemic.
The relief legislation, 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 lower-earners and families with children, and subsidies for health insurance.
The package faces a solid wall of GOP opposition, and Republicans used the unemployment impasse to accuse Biden of refusing to seek compromise with them.
“You could pick up the phone and end this right now,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said of Biden.
The standoff and a host of eleventh-hour deals Democratic leaders were cutting with rank-and-file lawmakers reflected the delicate challenge of navigating the precariously divided chamber.
The House version of the massive relief package provides $400 weekly emergency unemployment benefits — on top of regular state payments — through August.
In a compromise with moderates revealed earlier Friday, Senate Democrats said that would be reduced to $300 weekly but extended until early October. The plan, sponsored by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., would also reduce taxes on unemployment benefits.
Later, lawmakers said Manchin was backing an alternative by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, that would provide $300 weekly benefits until mid-July.
“I don’t know where he is,” No. 2 Senate Democratic leader Richard Durbin of Illinois, said of Manchin’s latest stance on jobless benefits. Asked if Democrats could simply accept the GOP’s version, Durbin said: “We don’t want to. We want to get this wrapped up.”