A group of 10 Republican senators sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Sunday proposing a coronavirus aid package smaller than his $ 1.9 trillion plan and asking him to negotiate with them to agree on the issue. of Covid-19’s new stimulus efforts.
The number of signatories is significant, because any bill passed under normal Senate rules would need at least 10 Republican Party supporters to be successful. This makes the letter, in fact, an offer to work with Democrats to pass new stimulus measures – under certain conditions.
In the letter, Republican lawmakers – a group that includes Sens. Mitt Romney from Utah, Susan Collins from Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, as well as other relative moderates – discussed their proposal, which they promised to release in full on Monday, would be able to receive bipartisan support, as it reflects Biden’s request for $ 160 billion for testing, screening, treatment and coronavirus protection supplies.
Lawmakers have also said that their bill will include funding for direct payments to “families most in need of assistance,” a reference to some lawmakers’ desire to test direct payments; assistance to small businesses and daycare; and $ 4 billion for mental health and substance use.
They did not provide details, but the Washington Post reports that the Republican Party’s proposal would cut the cost of the new stimulus by $ 1.3 trillion, to about $ 600 billion, and that it would do so by making major cuts on a number of priorities. Democrats.
For example, Democrats have been pushing for another round of direct payments of $ 1,400 for single people who earn $ 75,000 or less a year and for couples who earn $ 150,000 or less. As Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out on ABC This week On Sunday, Democrats promised that there would be another round of direct payments of at least $ 1,400 if they won both Senate seats in Georgia’s runoff runs in January – and they did.
“You can’t campaign on a number of issues, and after the election, when you get the power, say, ‘Well, you know what, we’re changing our minds,'” said Sanders.
Accepting the new Republican proposal would force Democrats to do just that, however – it would cut direct payments to $ 1,000 per person, reports the Post.
And those payments would likely be sent to a much smaller group of people under the new Republican plan. Ohio Senator Rob Portman, one of the signatories to the letter, said on CNN state of the Union On Sunday, direct payments should be limited to individuals who earn $ 50,000 or families who earn $ 100,000. “We are going to focus on those who are fighting,” said Portman.
Portman also said that the Democratic proposal to extend federal unemployment insurance – currently valued at $ 300 a week – until September was premature and that this program should also be better targeted.
Democrats have proposed not only to extend this program, but to expand it, increasing weekly payments to $ 400. The Post reports that the GOP plan envisages keeping the weekly subsidy at $ 300 and extending the program, currently scheduled to expire in March, until June.
The Republican Party’s plan also allegedly gets rid of the Democratic proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour, and would likely reduce the amount of aid available to state and local governments.
Republican Party signatories argue in their letter – and on Sunday television appearances – that their proposal will give Biden a chance to fulfill his promise of “unity”, a theme of his inaugural speech.
“In the spirit of bipartisanship and unity, we have developed a COVID-19 relief structure that is based on previous COVID assistance laws, all of which were approved with bipartisan support,” says the letter. “We request the opportunity to meet to discuss our proposal in greater detail and how we can work together to address the needs of the American people during this persistent pandemic.”
And they say that the Democrats’ current plans to bring their favorite proposal to Congress through a process known as reconciliation, which allows legislation related to budgetary issues to be passed in the Senate with a simple majority vote (most Democrats now have due to his victories in Georgia), he would – in Portman’s words – “poison the well” for any future attempts at bipartisan legislation.
state of the Union Host Dana Bash asked Portman why he had supported Republicans using reconciliation to advance controversial legislation in the past, noting that it had been used both in the Republican effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act and to transform the tax cuts of Trump in law. Portman replied that “reconciliation is not intended for the purposes for which they are trying to use it”, and argued that Democrats should not use reconciliation as their first recourse.
Democrats, however, have long been frustrated in their efforts to pass a broad stimulus package, agreeing to a compromise bill in late 2020, after months of Republican refusals to consider a $ 3 trillion bill that was approved by the Chamber in May 2020.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he is willing to “work with our Republican colleagues to promote” coronavirus relief, but that Democrats are “keeping all of our options open, on the table, including reconciliation. budget “.
What reception the new GOP proposal will receive from Biden is yet to be seen. Appearing in state of the Union on Sunday, the director of the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, told Bash: “We take suggestions to say where we might not have got it all right,” but argued, “The cost of doing too little now far outweighs the cost of doing too much. “
It is urgent to approve a new aid package, as federal coronavirus programs face expiration
Given that many federal coronavirus programs will expire in the coming months, there is an urgent need to work on the next round of stimuli. As Emily Stewart of Vox reported, delays in passing the last round meant coverage gaps for many of the unemployed.
On Friday, Biden emphasized the importance of getting approval for a coronavirus stimulus project, saying: “I support the approval of Covid’s relief measure with the support of Republicans if we can, but Covid’s relief measure has to be approved. There is no if, ands or but. “
Biden on whether he supports the approval of Covid’s relief through budget reconciliation: “I support the approval of Covid’s relief with the support of Republicans if we can, but Covid’s relief has to be approved. pic.twitter.com/rm4etycvKb
– Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 29, 2021
Given the Democratic majority in the House and the fact that legislation can be passed in that House by a simple majority of votes, the Senate is where any difficulty will arise to quickly approve aid. There, Democrats had to find 10 Republicans to support their proposal, reach an agreement with moderate Republicans on a plan like the one proposed by the 10 Republican senators on Sunday, or pass legislation through reconciliation.
For any of these routes to work in the Senate, Democrats need to be a united front. As it stands, they hold as little majority as possible in the equally divided Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaker.
And a united front is not guaranteed, because there are some right-wing Democrats in the Senate who have not fully embraced all of Biden’s plan proposals, something ABC’s Martha Raddatz asked Sanders on Sunday.
Specifically, she asked Sanders about Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who said that bipartisan legislation is important to him and that he did not offer full support for a $ 15 minimum wage. He also did not say whether he would agree with Democrats if they chose to reconciliation. Sanders expressed faith that “all Democrats understand the need to move forward” with coronavirus relief.
“The issue is not bipartisanship, the question is how to deal with these crises now,” said Sanders. “If Republicans want to work with us, they have better ideas on how to deal with these crises, this is great. But to be honest with you, I haven’t heard that yet. “
Sanders added that there would be other opportunities for bipartisanship in the future, especially around issues like the reform and infrastructure of prescription drugs. “But now, this country faces an unprecedented set of crises,” he said.
One of the signatories to the Republican Party letter, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, suggested on Sunday that Republicans did not have enough chance to work on a bipartisan agreement.
“If you want unity, you want bipartisanship, you should start with the group that is willing to work together,” said Cassidy of Fox News Sunday.
As Republicans have pointed out, Biden has declared his desire to work with Republicans on legislation. But, as Vox’s Ella Nilsen wrote, Biden’s ambitions to work in the corridor and approve his aid package can be conflicting – particularly given the more limited scale of relief that the 10 Republican senators now propose.
And Democrats seem to believe that if they can fulfill only one of the president’s ambitions, the priority is to get the package done. As Nilsen writes:
While Republicans in the bipartisan group are the ones who advocate cutting the Biden Covid-19 bill, Democratic senators from the centrist group are not so eager to back off. Democrats recall that Senate Republicans used the budgetary reconciliation mechanism to approve their massive tax cut in 2017, and some on the Democratic bench think they should give their priorities the same treatment now that they hold the majority.
Sanders, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, John Yarmuth, told reporters that their committees are working on drafting budget reconciliation resolutions for the Covid-19 relief bill, which could be approved in a matter of days if Schumer and Mayor Nancy Pelosi gave them the green light.
These reconciliation resolutions are expected this week. Republicans can also sign them if they wish.