As the Senate continues its historic impeachment proceedings, Democrats are on pace to speedily pass their $1.9 trillion proposal to address the COVID-19 crisis by next month.
The House advanced a key portion of the proposal Thursday night, just as House impeachment managers finished their arguments in the Senate. Shrugging off Republican objections, Democrats agreed to push forward with a bill that would send most U.S. households a $1,400 direct payment, expand and extend federal unemployment benefits through the end of August and significantly increase the child tax credit.
There’s still work to be done in the House on COVID-19 relief. The Ways and Means Committee, the most powerful committee in the House, passed its significant portion of the relief bill amounting to $940 billion of the whole package Thursday night. But there are in total 12 committees writing parts of the bill that will all need to go to the House Budget Committee and then to the House floor for a vote. The House Education and Labor Committee also passed its portion of the bill, which included raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour over four years, Wednesday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she intends on getting the entire package passed through the House by the end of February and on President Joe Biden’s desk before March 14, when expanded federal unemployment benefits currently reaching more than 10 million Americans will expire.
For now, Senate Democrats, who have spent the week in nonstop impeachment proceedings, aren’t expecting too many surprises in the weeks ahead.
There are some small changes that will likely be made. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has been one of the biggest champions of the expanded unemployment benefits, was disappointed to see the House only included five months of jobless benefits instead of the six months Biden proposed. Wyden intends to get that additional month tacked back on when the Senate takes on the bill.
“I’m going to go all out,” Wyden told reporters this week, citing remarks from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell from a Economic Club of New York event Wednesday that painted that bleak unemployment picture for the months ahead.
The Senate is poised to maintain the House’s structure for the direct payments, which cuts off checks for higher-earning households — a provision that was under much debate these last few weeks as many more conservative Democrats grumbled about giving checks to wealthier families. Though, a Senate aide familiar with talks noted that negotiations haven’t been finalized.
The House bill gives the full $1,400 check to all individuals who make $75,000 or less (and all joint filers earning $150,000 or less), as Biden originally proposed, but cuts off payments altogether for individuals who make more than $100,000 (or twice that for joint filers). The White House was open to changes to the direct payment income thresholds and there seems to be agreement in the Senate.
Two Senate Democratic aides said most of the anticipated changes will likely be tied to Senate rules around budget reconciliation, the legislative process Democrats are passing this relief bill through in order to bypass Republican objections. Senate rules dictate that budget reconciliation bills must have a direct and intended impact on federal spending or revenue, and cannot increase the deficit outside a certain window — in this case, $1.9 trillion over the next 10 years.
Democrats are anticipating the most controversy over two provisions: First, a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15 over the course of the next four years, and second, a federal paid leave mandate. As it stands, with objections from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), increasing the minimum wage to $15 doesn’t have enough support among Senate Democrats to pass even under budget reconciliation.
Democratic leaders, however, appear committed to trying regardless.
“Of course, some of this will depend on how aggressive Republicans will want to be on challenging things,” a Senate Democratic aide said.
Republicans have given every impression that they will be aggressive in rejecting Democrats’ relief bill. The Ways and Means Committee markup of the bill — a marathon two-day affair that took place both in-person and virtually — was a window into the partisan divides over passing COVID-19 aid.
Republicans chided their Democratic colleagues for being left out of the bill-writing process, and called the provisions in the bill “left-wing wish list items” and part of the “radical left wing agenda,” as Rep. Ron Estes (R-Ks.) said.
“They want to distract you from the majority of the bailout package that are special gifts to their voters, their political allies and their friends,” Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said.
Among the biggest gripes Republicans had with the bill was one of the proposals most central features: the unemployment insurance program. House Democrats, largely in line with Biden’s proposal, want to increase weekly federal unemployment benefits from $300 to $400 and extend them through the beginning of September.
“Don’t talk to me about fraud when we have had four years of fraud.”
- Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.)
Republicans have previously signed on to extensions of the unemployment insurance programs, but were hoping the last COVID-19 package, passed in December 2020, would be the programs’ final run. Ever since Congress passed an additional $600 weekly federal jobless benefits, negotiated between Democratic leaders and then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Republicans in Congress have complained the additional aid has been discouraging work.
“My childhood is marked by a dependence on government aid that incentivized my stepdad to stay home rather than work,” Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) said, arguing the benefit would keep people out of the job market. “I’ve seen what the welfare system does to families, it’s built to hold them down rather than build them up. At a young age I decided that the example set by my stepdad was not the life I wanted and I put myself to work.”
Many Republicans also cited concerns about growing fraud in unemployment benefits programs during the pandemic. The FBI reported a spike in unemployment insurance fraud over the summer. The Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General estimated fraudulent schemes and scams cost the program $36 billion through November.
But Democrats, who argued the program’s merits outweigh these risks, were uninterested in those objections.
“Don’t talk to me about fraud when we have had four years of fraud,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) said at the hearing.