Covid relief package nears finish line
What happened
The Senate was poised to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package on a partyline vote this week, setting up President Biden for his first major legislative win. The House version of the bill—passed last week with no Republican votes—included $1,400 stimulus checks for Americans earning under $75,000 a year; an extension of $400-a-week federal unemployment benefits through August; $350 billion in aid to state and local governments; and billions of dollars for schools, restaurants, vaccination programs, and numerous other measures. Under pressure from moderate Senate Democrats, Biden agreed to narrow income eligibility for the stimulus checks. The House plan had included smaller payouts for individuals earning $75,000 to $100,000; individuals who earn more than $80,000 will now get nothing. But Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer vowed that the bill—which is being advanced through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process—would pass largely intact. “We’ll have the votes,” he said. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced the legislation as “a bonanza of partisan spending.”
A measure to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 was stripped from the legislation, after the Senate parliamentarian ruled that it fell outside the narrow parameters required by reconciliation. The ruling enraged progressive House Democrats, some of whom suggested they might withhold their votes when the bill returns to the House for final approval. Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted the amended package would pass the chamber. “We have a consensus in our caucus,” she said, “that we are here to get the job done for the American people.”
What the editorials said
What an “excessive and unnecessary” boondoggle, said WashingtonExaminer.com. We’ve already spent $4.1 trillion on pandemic stimulus, and stand at a moment when infections are plummeting and the economy is primed for a rebound. Most of the money in the bill “isn’t even focused on the crisis at hand,” but is instead being spent on long-standing liberal priorities, such as aiding “teachers unions and bailing out pension funds.” It’s of a piece with Biden’s overarching plan: “to jam through the most far-left agenda in American history, even if he has to do it without a single Republican vote.”
Republicans “are putting party above country,” said the New York Daily News. Polls show strong public backing for the bill, and the four previous pandemic aid packages “enjoyed widespread bipartisan support.” So why is the congressional GOP united in opposition? No doubt the claimed fears that the bill will cause inflation to spike—an idea dismissed even by the Trump-appointed Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell—are of less concern than “the party of the president who’ll get credit for its impact.”
What the columnists said
This isn’t a Covid relief bill, “it’s Christmas for Democrats,” said David Harsanyi in NationalReview.com. The “partisan monstrosity” is larded with giveaways that have nothing to do with pandemic recovery—such as $350 billion to prop up blue states that “refuse to balance their budgets” and $852 million “for lefty-approved civic-volunteer agencies.” A third of the money won’t be spent until 2022 or later, “by which time the economy will be doing just fine.”
Republicans are making a tactical mistake, said Hayes Brown in MSNBC.com. In an oft-split country, Biden’s relief package “is almost absurdly popular”: 76 percent of voters support it, including 60 percent of Republicans, according to a new Morning Consult poll. Republican lawmakers seem happy to stick to Trumpism, yet they’ve abandoned the economic populism that helped Trump win in 2016, said Sam Stein in Politico.com. “For a party hoping to reclaim power, it’s a notable bet on the potency of grievance and culture wars.”
It’s worse than that, said Greg Sargent in WashingtonPost.com. Republicans are calculating that their “scorched-earth strategy” against a popular bill simply won’t matter in the 2022 midterms. GOP-dominated state legislatures are “racing forward with an extraordinary array of new voter-suppression efforts” and plotting “extreme gerrymanders” that could win them the House. Instead of heeding the American majority, Republicans have a different plan: “doubling down on counter-majoritarian tactics.”