Senate approves $1.9T virus relief bill
An exhausted Senate narrowly approved a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill Saturday as President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies notched a victory they called crucial for hoisting the country out of the pandemic and economic doldrums.
After laboring all night on a mountain of amendments — nearly all from Republicans and rejected — bleary-eyed senators approved the sprawling package on a 50-49 partyline vote. That sets up final congressional approval by the House next week so lawmakers can whisk it to Biden for his signature.
The huge measure — its total spending is nearly one-tenth the size of the entire U.S. economy — is Biden’s biggest early priority. It stands as his formula for addressing the deadly virus and a limping economy, twin crises that have afflicted the country for a year.
“This nation has suffered too much for much too long,” Biden told reporters at the White House after the vote. “And everything in this package is designed to relieve the suffering and to meet the most urgent needs of the nation, and put us in a better position to prevail.”
Saturday’s vote was also a crucial political moment for Biden and Democrats, who need nothing short of party unanimity in a 50-50 Senate they run with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote. They have a slim 10-vote House edge.
Not a single Republican backed the bill in the Senate or when it initially passed the House, underscoring the barbed partisan environment that’s so far characterizing the early days of Biden’s presidency.
A small but pivotal band of moderate Democrats leveraged changes in the legislation that incensed progressives, not making it any easier for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to guide the measure through the House. But rejection of their first, signature bill was not an option for Democrats, who face two years of trying to run Congress with virtually no room for error.
“They feel like we do, we have to get this done,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said of the House. He said he’d spoken to Pelosi about the Senate’s changes and added, “It’s not going to be everything everyone wants. No bill is.”
The bill provides direct payments of up to $1,400 for most Americans and extended emergency unemployment benefits. There are vast piles of spending for COVID-19 vaccines and testing, states and cities, schools and ailing industries, along with tax breaks to help lower-earning people, families with children and consumers buying health insurance.
The package faced solid opposition from Republicans, who call it a wasteful spending spree for Democrats’ liberal allies that ignores recent indications that the pandemic and the economy could be turning the corner.
“The Senate has never spent $2 trillion in a more haphazard way,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Of Democrats, he said, “Their top priority wasn’t pandemic relief. It was their Washington wish list.”
The Senate commenced a dreaded “vote-a-thon” — a continuous series of votes on amendments — shortly before midnight Friday, and by its end around noon had dispensed with about three dozen. The Senate had been in session since 9 a.m. EST Friday.
Overnight, the chamber was like an experiment in the best techniques for staying awake. Several lawmakers appeared to rest their eyes or doze at their desks, often burying their faces in their hands. At one point, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, at 48 one of the younger senators, trotted into the chamber and did a prolonged stretch.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, RAlaska, missed the votes to attend his father-inlaw’s funeral.
The measure follows five earlier ones totaling about $4 trillion that Congress has enacted since last spring and comes amid signs of a potential turnaround.
Vaccine supplies are growing, deaths and caseloads have eased but remain frighteningly high, and hiring was surprisingly strong last month, though the economy remains 10 million jobs smaller than its pre-pandemic levels.
The Senate package was delayed repeatedly as Democrats made eleventhhour changes aimed at balancing demands by their competing moderate and progressive factions.
Work on the bill ground to a halt Friday after an agreement among Democrats on extending emergency jobless benefits seemed to collapse. Nearly 12 hours later, top Democrats and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, perhaps the chamber’s most conservative Democrat, said they had a deal, and the Senate approved it on a party-line 50-49 vote.
Under their compromise, $300 weekly emergency unemployment checks — on top of regular state benefits — would be renewed, with a final payment made Sept. 6. There would also be tax breaks on some of those payments, helping people the pandemic abruptly tossed out of jobs and risked tax
penalties on the benefits.
The House’s relief bill, largely similar to the Senate’s, provided $400 weekly benefits through August. The current $300 per week payments expire March 14, and Democrats want the bill on Biden’s desk by then to avert a lapse.
Manchin and Republicans have asserted that higher jobless benefits discourage people from returning to work, a rationale most Democrats and many economists reject.
The agreement on jobless benefits wasn’t the only move that showed moderates’ sway.
The Senate voted Friday to eject a House-approved boost in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, a major defeat for progressives. Eight Democrats opposed the increase, suggesting that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and other liberals pledging to continue the effort in coming months will face a difficult fight.
Party leaders also agreed to restrict eligibility for the $1,400 stimulus checks that will go to most Americans. That amount would be gradually reduced until, under the Senate bill, it reaches zero for people earning $80,000 and couples making $160,000. Those amounts were higher in the House version.
Many of the rejected GOP amendments were either attempts to force Democrats to cast politically awkward votes or for Republicans to demonstrate their zeal for issues that appeal to their voters.
These included defeated efforts to bar the bill’s education funds from going to schools closed for the pandemic that don’t reopen their doors, or that let transgender students born male to participate in female sports. One amendment would have blocked aid to so-called sanctuary cities, where local authorities balk at helping federal officials round up immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
During a group’s recent meeting at the now-vacant Speedway gas station near where George Floyd died, children roasted marshmallows on a fire pit while adults discussed topics ranging from activism to snow removal.
“Black joy is a form of protest,” said Marcia Howard, one of the group’s organizers, referencing plans for celebrating Arctic explorer Matthew Henson as part of Black History Month.
But the agenda on this chilly Thursday morning in February quickly segued to more immediate concerns: Who would pick up skis and broomball sticks for an event being planned at a nearby park? And what’s to be done about the snow piling up at the site’s greenhouse that preserves plants left in Floyd’s memory?
Such is life at George Floyd Square, the place where former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes. Although many in the community consider the place where the Black man died to be a sacred space, it also has presented some headaches for the city.
The square sprang up organically in the days after Floyd’s death. As people gathered to express their grief and anger, including leaving offerings, community members set up barricades of refrigerators, trash cans and wooden pallets to block traffic. The city eventually replaced those with concrete barriers.
Amid concerns that the barricaded square was decimating businesses and making the neighborhood less safe at night, city leaders recently pledged to reopen it after Chauvin’s murder trial. Jury selection starts Monday, and the trial is expected to
stretch into April.
The residents and activists who serve as unofficial leaders and organizers of George Floyd Square say they won’t step aside unless the city meets their list of 24 demands. Among them: recall the county prosecutor, fire the head of the state’s criminal investigative agency, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on programs to create jobs, combat racism and support affordable housing. They also are demanding that the square remain closed until the trials scheduled for August of the other three officers charged in Floyd’s death.
Since the city asserted it would reopen the square after Chauvin’s trial, the caretakers of the space have declined to talk in detail about negotiations to reopen it. Jeanelle Austin, a racial justice leadership coach and a lead caretaker of the memorial area, said the demands that fall within the city’s control aren’t unreasonable.
“The thing about it is that a lot of the different demands are asks from different people, and Black folks aren’t monolithic,” said Austin, who is Black. “So it’s really incumbent upon our city leadership to really look at the needs behind the asks, and really fulfilling those needs.”
A towering steel sculpture of a raised fist dominates the middle of the intersection, a replacement for the wooden sculpture that first went up. Murals memorializing Floyd or marking the struggle against discrimination have overtaken nearly every vertical surface. Warming houses are available at the barricades, and so is hand sanitizer in a nod to COVID-19 safety precautions. A small library, a community closet for clothing and food shelves are among various services available to visitors.
>> Montgomery County recorded its highest number of positive coronavirus cases last December but signs are emerging to indicate the county is beginning to control the spread of the virus as it reaches the one-year anniversary of the pandemic.
According to county health data, the sevenday average of cases reached 453.4 on Monday, Dec. 7, which is referred to as the worst day of the pandemic or the fall peak. The number of positive tests on that date climbed to 688.
The 14-day positivity rate stood at 10.85% on Dec. 7. Health officials believe having a positivity rate less than 5% indicates a county is controlling the spread of the virus and keeping it suppressed.
But more than two months later, by Wednesday, Feb. 24, the sevenday average of cases had dropped to 107.4, the lowest number since last summer, and there were only 127 positive tests recorded on that date. The 14-day positivity rate stood at 5.61%, according to county figures.
There were 468 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the county’s nine hospitals on Dec. 7 but by Feb. 24 the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients had dropped to 154, according to county coronavirus key indicators.
The pandemic presented a series of ups and downs
as county health officials tracked the virus throughout the year.
The first two cases of COVID-19 were identified in the county on March 7, 2020, and once community spread became evident, a spring surge of cases quickly followed. The county became the epicenter for the virus in Southeast Pennsylvania.
On March 21, officials reported the first COVID-19 death in the county, a 72-year-old Abington man.
By Friday, April 24, 2020, the seven-day average of cases reached 163, the number of positive tests on that date climbed to 275 and the 14-day positivity rate soared to 24.56%. That date, on which COVID-19 hospitalizations reached 430, is considered
the spring peak of the virus.
“The situation was changing so rapidly,” county Commissioners’ Chairwoman Dr. Valerie Arkoosh recalled during a recent interview.
During the spring surge, Gov. Tom Wolf ordered schools, community centers, childcare centers licensed by the state, gyms, entertainment venues and nonessential businesses in the county of more than 820,000 people to close. Later, court operations were reduced and efforts were made to reduce the inmate population at the county jail.
“And I think it helped. Our numbers came down very, very quickly once we got a handle on the situation,” explained Arkoosh,
who as a physician has been at the forefront of the county’s efforts to combat COVID-19 and provide citizens with the latest information regarding the outbreak.
By Wednesday, June 17, 2020, the seven-day average of cases dropped to 26.7 and officials recorded only 35 positive tests on that date, which is considered the summer low. The 14-day positivity rate was 4.94% on June 17 and 100 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, according to the data.
“Our numbers came down and they stayed down until the fall and right before Halloween and then all the holidays came and that was very challenging. For months we were in a great place. The fall and winter
holidays were just devastating for us. Our worst days were after Thanksgiving,” said Arkoosh, referring to the Dec. 7 data.
“It started to get cold. When it starts to get cold, people go inside, number one, which is a problem with this virus, and number two, these types of viruses stay suspended in the air longer when the air is cooler and less humid,” Arkoosh added. “People started to go inside and weather started to cool off and I think we just started to see enormous fatigue about this virus.”
Other key indicators during the year-long pandemic showed that the seven-day incidence rate of cases per 100,000 people was 137.3 last April 24, had decreased to 22.5 on June 17, and increased to 382.0 by Dec. 7. On Feb. 24, that seven-day incidence rate had dropped to 90.5.
The latest available data indicates a more positive trend for long-term care facilities.
Statistics showed that during the seven-day period ending April 24, there were 457 positive cases of the virus in the county’s long-term care facilities. That seven-day number dropped to 29 by June 17, increased to 107 on Dec. 7 and by Feb. 24, there were only 11 positive cases reported in long-term care facilities, according to county key indicators.
The county recorded 126 deaths from the virus over the 14-day period ending April 24 and 76 deaths over the 14-day period ending June 17. For the 14-day period ending Dec. 7 the county announced 27 virus deaths. During the most recent 14-day period ending Feb. 24, the county recorded 38 deaths.
“That is an increase in number,” Arkoosh reacted to the number of most recent deaths. “As we’ve talked about during this entire pandemic, sadly, deaths do lag cases. Oftentimes, it’s weeks to a month or even longer before someone passes away from COVID-19. So, it’s not unusual to see an increase like this, given the numbers of cases that we were seeing a few weeks ago.
“But it is a reminder of how serious this situation remains,” Arkoosh said.
As of Friday, a total of 1,233 county residents had died from the virus since the pandemic first surfaced in March 2020.