President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid proposal may end up less costly and more narrow after a bipartisan makeover some House and Senate lawmakers hope to achieve.
A bipartisan group of senators has planned to meet with officials from the Biden administration in the coming days to discuss the president’s proposal, which includes a provision to lift the minimum wage to $15. The Biden plan would also provide $1,400 stimulus checks (bringing the total aid for individuals to $2,000) at the cost of $1 trillion, in addition to $440 billion for state and local aid and $400 billion to fight the virus.
Congress has already passed nearly $4 trillion in coronavirus relief since the pandemic started last year, including $900 billion last month.
“Just show me why the $1.9 [trillion] is needed right now when it’s going to be needed and what we didn’t get out the door before that didn’t take care of the needs,” Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat and leader of the bipartisan group, said. “There are some logical questions to ask, and hopefully, we’ll have a good answer.”
The bipartisan group includes lawmakers who helped end the stalemate on the last round of virus aid. They are concerned the new Biden plan is too costly and laden with provisions that will make it impossible to pass in the Senate, where at least 10 Republicans are needed to advance and pass legislation under the 60-vote threshold.
Republicans are already warning they won’t vote for Biden’s proposal because it includes the minimum wage increase. They say the stimulus checks must be narrowed to target only those who need it the most and not at wealthier individuals and families.
“If he takes some of the peripherals out, he’s got a better chance,” Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican, told the Washington Examiner.
Like other Republicans, Rounds said he is open to considering a new round of help aimed strictly at the neediest.
“I have no objection to revisiting and looking at what the economic conditions are and the needs for fighting this pandemic,” Rounds said. “But I don’t think that they can load this up with a lot of items that many of us would consider to be peripheral to the pandemic relief package.”
A bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers helped end months of gridlock to enable a deal on the $900 billion measure.
A House aide said lawmakers are eager to produce a similar accord that would speed up passage of the next round of coronavirus aid.
“There is bipartisan interest in trying to do a smaller COVID aid deal and working with the Biden administration on that,” the aide said.
In the Senate, the bipartisan group comprises eight Republicans and eight Democrats, among them Majority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who helped broker the last coronavirus aid deal.
Durbin told reporters on Thursday that lawmakers are worried the stimulus checks provided in the Biden plan do not target the neediest.
“There’s been a concern about the cash payment and whether or not there ought to be a different criteria for passing it out and distributing it,” Durbin said. “That has been discussed at length, and I think it’s one of the major elements.”
Durbin said the bipartisan group has not written its proposal to counter Biden’s but is simply in talks with the administration.
Lawmakers are eager to pass additional funding for vaccine distribution at least.
Across the Capitol, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Democrats a vaccine distribution aid package could come to the floor in early February when the House returns from a weeklong recess.
House Democrats are also weighing a procedural tactic known as budget reconciliation that would allow a coronavirus aid spending bill to pass the Senate with just 51 votes. The bill would have to be more narrow than the Biden plan and could not include the minimum wage hike, for example.
In the name of speedy passage, Democratic leaders said it’s an option.
“I think the objective of both House Democrats and the administration is to get this done as quickly as possible, whatever we need to do,” House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat, said. “I think the administration and the caucus would prefer it be done on a bipartisan basis, and so we haven’t made a decision yet to use reconciliation. But we are prepared to move very quickly if it looks like we can’t do it any other way.”
