Senate votes to take up coronavirus relief package
WASHINGTON — An evenly divided Senate agreed to take up a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package Thursday, triggering days of partisan debate that was likely to stretch into the weekend.
The chamber voted 51-50 to proceed to the measure, with Vice President Kamala Harris on hand to break the tie. That vote allows the Senate to take up the House bill, which that chamber passed early Saturday morning on a 219-212 vote.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck
Schumer introduced a substitute amendment to the House bill incorporating myriad changes sought by Democratic senators. Those include narrowing the reach of tax rebate checks away from upper-income households and placing additional restrictions on some $350 billion in aid to state and local governments.
Republicans have promised a slew of amendments to a bill they appeared to uniformly oppose. They have attacked the measure as excessively costly for an economy on the mend and insufficiently targeted to those most in need of help. They have also complained about provisions they said have nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, such as a financial rescue for failing union pension plans.
But the “vote-a-rama” on amendments won’t begin until Friday at the earliest. Under the rules of budget reconciliation, the process used to avoid a Republican filibuster, there must be 20 hours allotted to general debate, unless senators agree to give up some of that time.
The start of those 20 hours will be pushed back, however, since Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., objected to allowing debate to begin until Schumer’s amendment, which spans 628 pages, is read aloud on the floor in full. That task could take about 10 hours unless he relents sooner.
“So often we rush these massive bills that are hundreds of thousands of pages long,” Johnson said Thursday. “How can you craft effective amendments on a bill that you haven’t even seen or haven’t been given time to read?”
In opening the floor on Thursday, Schumer said he was prepared to remain in session all weekend if necessary to pass the bill.
“No matter how long it takes, the Senate is going to stay in session to finish the bill this week,” Schumer said. “We all know this will merely delay the inevitable. It will accomplish little more than a few sore throats for the Senate clerks who work very hard, day in, day out, to help the Senate function.”
The measure would offer a new round of tax rebate checks, expanded unemployment benefits, state and local government aid, vaccine funding and money to help schools reopen safely, among many other things. The fiscal 2021 budget resolution allows for the deficit to increase by nearly $1.9 trillion to accommodate the emergency spending without any offsetting cuts or tax increases.