The week
Biden’s team is supposedly surprised that Republicans don’t see the political benefits of supporting a major COVID-19 bill.
COVID-19’s spending legislation policy is complicated. President Biden and former President Donald Trump, who do not agree much, pushed for direct payments of $ 2,000 for most Americans this winter, and the Republican governor of West Virginia is supporting the COVID-19 aid package of $ 1.9 trillion from Biden while his state is a Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, prefers a smaller package. The White House is meeting privately with a group of Senate Republicans who have proposed an alternative $ 618 billion package, reports the Associated Press, although Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reject that amount as insufficient and urge Democrats to grow rapidly. Biden and his advisers “publicly praise the virtues of bipartisan collaboration”, but “they are not polyanaish about it,” reports Sam Stein in Politico. “They know that there is no recent history to suggest that such collaboration is coming.”, But “within the White House there is still some surprise that Republicans are currently no longer interested in working with them on relief from COVID. Not because they believe Republicans philosophically support the bill, but because there are clear political incentives for them to do so. “Biden and his advisers have repeatedly noted that just because the budget reconciliation process would allow Democrats to approve much of the $ 1.9 package. trillion without Republican support, Republicans can still vote for the package. If Democrats follow the route of budgetary reconciliation, the 10 Senate Republicans can “oppose the measure without being able to stop it or work to shape it, promise to vote it and get credit for the benefits it brings”, he reports Stein. “Put another way: Republicans can vote for a bill that includes billions of dollars of aid for states, large amounts of money for vaccine distribution and a $ 1,400 stimulus check for most Americans. Or they they can object to it on the grounds that the price is too steep, or the minimum wage increase is too high, or the process too hurried. “And if they do, a senior government official told Stein,” they will not receive credit “for those $ 1,400 checks. Democrats only have the option of party line because they unexpectedly won both seats in the Senate in a runoff election in Georgia, Stein notes, and a “political lesson from this episode is bluntly: it is better to be on the side of giving money to women. people”. Trump understood that. Time will tell what the Senate Republicans will decide. More stories from theweek.com5 scathing caricatures about the Republican Party’s Marjorie Taylor Greene problem Prosecutors don’t know where sniper Kenosha Kyle Rittenhouse is, they want him to be arrested againMarjorie Taylor Greene is getting exactly what he wants