The House of Representatives passed the final version of Joe Biden’s signature legislation on Covid relief and sent the $ 1.9 tonne package to the president’s office.
When Mr. If the bill is signed on Friday, many of its provisions will take effect immediately:
The administration said it plans to hit millions of $ 1,400 direct payments, or stimulus checks, by the end of March. The package spans an early-summer Covid-era federal unemployment program that gives retired Americans $ 300 a week in addition to their state unemployment benefits. The federal government will hand out the interpretation of the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of legislation to states and local governments on the front lines of the pandemic response. An extensive child tax credit for families is built into the tax code.
The law passed a majority vote in the House on Wednesday after not a single Senate Republican voted for it last week.
“How do you say no to getting 50 percent of the poor in America out of poverty?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a speech shortly before the vote in parliament on Wednesday, predicting the preceding political battle between Democrats and Republicans over the bill.
With a price tag of 1.9 billion tons, the landmark legislation is estimated to be the second most expensive in US history behind the initial coronavirus response package, known as the CARES law, which was worth about $ 2.2 billion.
Mr. Biden’s so-called U.S. bailout plan is more than twice as expensive as the stimulus package the Obama administration adopted in 2009 to launch the U.S. economy when it recovered from the Great Recession and housing and financial crises.
The White House named the Covid relief legislation as “the most progressive legislation in history,” pointing out that economic forecasts suggest that it will lift up to a third of Americans currently living below the poverty line.
Democrats get together
Progressive firearms such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York have criticized Senate Democrats for passing legislation that would reduce eligibility for stimulus checks and slash weekly federal unemployment checks from $ 400 to $ 300. But when it’s time for the House to vote, they mostly fall into a line, uniting a wide variety of Democrats across the ideological spectrum.
The portion of the Covid bill is a major moment for Democrats early in the Biden presidency, showing that they can stand together to help Americans, despite the deep rifts over policies and government approaches that have taken place over the past few years wrapped by the party.
“I’m so excited I just can ‘t hide it! a visibly and audibly animated me. Pelosi said when she took the podium at her news conference earlier this week.
“This is a remarkable, historic, transformative piece of legislation,” the speaker said.
Although the bill is now in the hands of the executive to administer the American people, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress know that the fight over the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) has just begun.
Republicans opposed the bill if, in the words of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, “a laundry list with leftist priorities precedes the pandemic and does not meet the needs of American families.” ‘
In a speech on Wednesday, the GOP leader of the House passed the $ 600 million bill for San Francisco, the hometown of Ms. Pelosi, rejected, part of the Republican effort to reconsider the package as a Democratic payout to their allies and allies across the country.
But San Francisco gets no special treatment, but the Democrats shot back: that $ 600 million is less than 0.2 percent of the legislation’s total spending of $ 350 billion to promote state and local governments.
Threatening PR war
Democrats still know they face the daunting PR war against Republicans for the hearts and minds of Americans who were desperate for help amid a coronavirus pandemic that increased their economic well-being as well as their social lives.
The IDP intends to take back majorities in the House as well as in the Senate in 2022
From Mr. Biden and me. Pelosi to the lowest backers in Congress, the Democrats agreed on how they intend to win the Covid PR war: shameless self-promotion of the ARPA.
“In the next few weeks and months, we must seize every opportunity to explain exactly how the American rescue plan will work for the American people,” Senator Chuck Schumer wrote to his colleagues.
Mr Schumer urged his fellow Democrats to join a publicity campaign for rural pandemic relief legislation, urging them to seize every opportunity to incite the bill’s many “people-oriented provisions”: $ 1400- stimulus checks for more than eight out of every ten U.S. households. , an extension this summer of the federal Covid-era unemployment benefits program, broadened child tax credit and several other top measures.
“We can not be ashamed to tell the American people how this historic legislation directly helps them,” the Democratic leader of the Senate wrote.
Mr Biden is on board the strategy.
At a conference with House Democrats last week, the president explained how the Obama administration paid a political price for being too humble after signing the $ 815 billion stimulus package in 2009 to try to climb out of the Great Recession.
“We did not adequately explain what we did. Barack was so modest, “lamented Mr. Pray that call. “I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did. “He said, ‘We do not have time. I’m not going to take a win. And ironically, we paid a price for that humility. ‘
President, First Lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are going on a publicity tour next week to sell the bill to Americans who are skeptical about its terms and contours, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced on Wednesday.
Mr. Biden will also appoint an official to enforce and enforce the law.
An edge?
Despite progressive protests with the new Covid package as well as Republicans’ wholesale rejection, the bill has enjoyed wide support in public polls across the ideological spectrum.
A poll by Monmouth University last Wednesday found that more than six in ten Americans support the Biden stimulus plan.
This should facilitate the work of the Democrats when it comes to promulgating legislation to defend their majority in Congress by mid-2022.
The chairman of the Democratic Congress Campaign (DCCC), Sean Patrick Maloney, has already suggested that the Covid relief bill would be a big piece of the puzzle in his party’s plans to retain control of the house.
“Every time you deliver for the American people, you strengthen your position politically. It will therefore strengthen us because it is a good policy, ‘he said in an interview with NBC News on Tuesday.
“We need to shout from the roofs that we are applying historic legislation that will recharge the economy and end the pandemic.”