Dems object to GOP bid to divide $1.9T COVID-19 rescue package
WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress and the White House rejected a Republican pitch to split President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue plan into smaller chunks Thursday, with lawmakers appearing primed to muscle the sweeping economic and virus aid forward without GOP help.
Despite Biden’s calls for unity, Democrats said the stubbornly high unemployment numbers and the battered U.S. economy leave them unwilling to waste time courting Republican support that might not materialize. They also don’t want to curb the size and scope of a package they say will provide desperately needed money to distribute the vaccine, reopen schools and send cash to American households and businesses.
Biden has been appealing directly to Republican and Democratic lawmakers while signaling his priority to press ahead.
“We’ve got a lot to do, and the first thing we’ve got to do is get this COVID package passed,” Biden said Thursday in the Oval Office.
Success would give Biden a signature accomplishment in his first 100 days in office, unleashing $400 billion to expand vaccinations and to reopen schools, $1,400 direct payments to households and other priorities, including a gradual increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Failure would be a highprofile setback early in his presidency.
Democrats in the House and Senate are operating as though they know they are on borrowed time. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., are laying the groundwork for a go-it-alone approach as soon as next week.
They are drafting a budget reconciliation bill that would start the process to pass the relief package with a simple 51-vote Senate majority — rather than the 60-vote threshold typically needed in the Senate to advance legislation. The goal would be passage by March, when jobless benefits, housing assistance and other aid is set to expire.
Schumer said he drew from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s advice to “act big” to weather the COVID-19 economic crisis.
“Everywhere you look, alarm bells are ringing,” Schumer said from the Senate floor.
Senate Republicans in a bipartisan group warned their colleagues in a “frank” conversation late Wednesday that Biden and Democrats are making a mistake by loading up the aid bill with other priorities and jamming it through Congress without their support.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a former White House budget director under President George W. Bush, wants a deeper accounting of what funds remain from the $900 billion coronavirus aid package from December.
“Literally, the money has not gone out the door,” he said. “I’m not sure I understand why there’s a grave emergency right now.”
On Thursday, more than 120 economists and policymakers signed a letter in support of Biden’s package, saying the $900 billion that Congress approved in December before he took office was “too little and too late to address the enormity of the deteriorating situation.”
“The risks of going too small dramatically outweigh the risks of going too big,” said Gene Sperling, a former director of the White House National Economic Council, who signed the letter.