WASHINGTON (AP) – Congress is ready to approve a major $ 1.9 billion COVID-19 legal aid bill that will put President Joe Biden on the verge of an early triumph that promotes democratic priorities and unity demonstrate what his party needs to achieve future victories.
The House is expected to approve the final congress on Wednesday for the package, which is aimed at fulfilling the Democrats’ promise to defeat the pandemic and revive the weakened economy. The Republicans of the House and the Senate unanimously opposed the package because it is inflated, crammed with liberal policies and without noticing signs that the dual crises are easing.
“This is a remarkable, historic, transformative piece of legislation that will greatly help destroy the virus and solve our economic crisis,” Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Huisgenoot said Tuesday.
For Biden and Democrats, the bill is essentially a canvas on which they have painted their convictions – that government programs can be a benefit to millions of people, not an obstacle, and that spending large sums on such efforts can be a cure-all be, not a curse. The measure monitors the Democrats’ priorities so closely that many consider it the best performance of their careers, and despite their slim majority in Congress, there has never been any real tension over its fate.
They are also empowered by three dynamics: their unlimited control over the White House and Congress, polls that show strong support for Biden’s approach, and a moment when most voters care little about rising national debt to a stratospheric $ 22 trillion. Neither party seems very concerned about the rising red ink, unless the other uses it to fund its priorities, whether democratic spending or tax cuts by the IDP.
A predominant feature of the bill is the initiatives that make it one of the largest federal drivers in years to help low- and middle-income families. Included are extended tax credits for next year for children, childcare and family leave plus expenses for tenants, feeding programs and accounts for people.
The criterion offers up to $ 1400 direct payments to most Americans, extended emergency unemployment benefits and hundreds of billions for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, schools, state and local governments and airlines from airlines to concert halls. There is help for farmers with colors and pension systems, and subsidies for consumers who buy health insurance and states that extend Medicaid coverage for lower earners.
Its expansion is an important GOP discussion point.
‘It does not focus on COVID lighting. It is focused on expanding the back-left agenda, ”said Steve Scalise, leader of the GOP House, no. 2, of Louisiana, said.
A poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found last week that 70% of Americans support Biden’s response to the virus, including a solid 44% of Republicans.
However, the path of the bill underscored the challenges of the Democrats as they try to set a legislative record to persuade voters to keep them going with Congress in next year’s election.
Democrats control the Senate, split 50-50, just because Vice President Kamala Harris gives them the winning votes in bound films. They only have an advantage of ten votes in the House.
There is almost no room for a party ranging from Senator Joe Manchin, on the Conservative side, to Progressive people like Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts, Senator Elizabeth Warren and the Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts.
Progressive people had to swallow large concessions in the bill to bolster moderate support. The worst was to drop the approved federal minimum wage increase to $ 15 per hour by 2025.
Moderates force sharpening eligible for the $ 1,400 stimulus checks, which are now being phased out completely for individuals earning $ 80,000 and couples earning $ 160,000. The House’s initial expansion of the $ 400 weekly unemployment benefits, which were paid in addition to state benefits, is being reduced by the Senate to $ 300 and will now come to a halt in early September.
Manchin was a leading position in the midst of talks that led to all these initiatives being stalled. The Senate approved the bill on a party line 50-49 vote.
Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., Chair of the roughly 100-member Progressive Caucus of Congress, says ‘furious’. But she calls the overall bill ‘incredibly daring’, adding: ‘It hits all our progressive priorities – putting money in people’s pockets, gunshots, unemployment insurance, childcare, schools.’
The Independent Tax Policy Center said the Senate-approved bill would provide nearly 70% of the tax benefits to households earning $ 91,000 or less. In contrast, the Trump-era IDP tax bill gave nearly half of the 2018 cuts to the top 5% of households earning about $ 308,000, says the research center, which is run by the liberal-leaning Urban Institute and Brookings Institution.
After all, it will not be easier to keep Democrats united as the party tries to advance the rest of its agenda. There are fault lines in the party over priorities such as immigration, health care and taxes.
At some point, it seems likely that progressive people will draw their own stripes in the sand. They are already demanding that the party revisit the minimum wage increase, and amid all these Republicans, they are already showing that they are ready to attack.
The U.S. action network, linked to GOP House leaders, said it was launching digital ads in mostly temperate districts, calling the emergency relief bill “a freight train of trivial expenses to bankroll their liberal partners.”
The bill passed the Senate under the budget rules that prevented Republicans from launching filibusters, requiring 60 votes for most measures. The process will not be available for much legislation, but in any case, the Democratic Senate deviations will not start most bills.
Even with their procedural advantage, the Democrats’ victory in the Senate was marked by delays. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Forced clerks to spend nearly 11 hours reading the entire 628-page bill; the negotiations with Manchin on unemployment benefits lasted about nine hours; and votes on three dozen amendments, virtually all of which were previously lost to lose, took about 12 hours more.