WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic leaders have a strong dynamic on their side as Congress advocates its first vote on the $ 1.9 billion COVID-19 relief bill.: Would any Democrat dare vote to drop the new President Joe Biden’s lead initiative?
The Democratic House majority with ten votes and ten votes leaves little room for deviations in the face of a solid Republican opposition, and they have no one in a 50-50 Senate controlling them, only with Vice-vote Kamala Harris’ decisive voice. Internal democratic disputes remain over issues such as raising the minimum wage, how much aid can be drawn from struggling state and local governments and whether emergency benefits should be extended for an extra month.
But because the House Budget Committee was planning to approve the 591-page package Monday, Democrats across the spectrum show little indication that they are willing to embarrass Biden with a high month-long defeat in his presidency.
Such a setback would be the first blow to both Biden and new Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y. It could also hurt Congress Democrats in general by risking consequences in the 2022 election if they do not unite effectively against clear enemies such as the pandemic and the frozen economy.
“You think very seriously before casting a decisive vote against your party’s legislative agenda,” said Ian Russell, a longtime Democratic consultant. But he warns lawmakers at home must decide “how their vote will play out”.
The problem that provokes the deepest divisions is an effort, mainly by progressive people, to raise the federal minimum wage over five years to $ 15 an hour. The current minimum of $ 7.25 went into effect in 2009.
“It was the top priority for progressives,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., President of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in an interview last week. “This is something we have tackled and something we have promised the American people.”
It is expected that a general relief bill, including the minimum wage increase, will clean the house, and probably the Senate as well. However, the fate of the minimum wage is shaky in the Senate, where Joe Manchin of West Virginia, perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the House, said the $ 15 target is too expensive.
Sen. Kyrsten Cinema, D-Ariz., Suggested she could oppose it as well. She said the Democrats should not go through with special rules that allow them to avoid a Republican filibuster, which requires an unreachable 60 votes to overcome.
Manchin’s office did not make him available for an interview. Earlier this month, he told The Hill, a political publication, that $ 11 an hour would be ‘responsible and reasonable’.
Even more ominously, the Senate MP is expected to decide soon whether the minimum wage provision should be removed from the bill. Under the expedited procedures used by the Democrats, items that are not primarily related to the budget cannot be included, and it is unclear whether the Democrats will have the votes to reverse such a decision.
But even in a Congress where virtually every Democratic vote is needed, few, if any, openly threaten to take down the entire bill unless they make sense.
Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, I-Vt., The main sponsor of his chamber, said Democrats should “act boldly” and approve a package with the minimum wage increase. He answered indirectly when asked if he would be willing to compromise to keep the plan in the general account.
“Every Democrat understands that at this moment in history, this unprecedented moment of pain and suffering for working families, it is absolutely essential that we support the President, that we do what the American people want and that we succeed in the package. , “he said in an interview.
Moderate Representative Brad Schneider, D-Ill., Also denies an aversion to unattainable demands. The road to success is to ‘push as hard as you can to get as much as possible now that you want, not to compromise your principles and to know that tomorrow is another day’, said Schneider, a leader of the New Democrat Coalition, a group, said of nearly 100 moderate House Democrats.
Republicans say the proposal is too expensive, and is not aimed at people who need it most, and that schools are not adequate reopens and is a biased democratic power play to ignore the GOP.
The bill will provide one-time payments of $ 1,400 to millions of low- and middle-income people, increase tax credits for children who can be paid in advance and monthly, and offer additional federal unemployment benefits of $ 400 per week through August. It also offers hundreds of billions of dollars to state and local governments, shutter schools, COVID-19 vaccines and to test and struggle airlines, restaurants and other businesses.
History has rich examples of legislators making crucial decisions to loyally withdraw priorities from their parties’ presidents, with mixed results.
In 2017, three GOP deviations occurred – known as a post-midnight thumbs down by now-deceased Senator John McCain, R-Ariz. – brought down then-President Donald Trump’s trademark attempt to repeal the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. McCain’s voice unleashed Trump’s eternal enmity. Of the other two, Maine Senator Susan Collins was re-elected last year and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski faces 2022 in 2022.
In 1993, the new president Bill Clinton’s $ 500 billion deficit reduction plan overtook the House by a single vote after first-year representative Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky agreed to support it. Mezvinsky, who had earlier criticized the measure as inadequate spending cuts, voted ‘yes’ after Clinton sought her support in a call she took during the vote in the dressing room.
“I told him I know how important it is and that I will not make it go away, but I said I would just be the ballot,” she recalled in an interview this week. She said she also told him, “If I pull you over, you’ll lose this seat.”
Both scenarios played out.
The package passed 218-216, saved by her casting vote. And the legislature, whose name is now Margolies after the divorce, lost her re-election two years later from a heavy GOP district in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
She never returned to Congress. But one of her children, Marc Mezvinsky, later married Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea.