WASHINGTON – President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is due to present proposals for trillions of dollars in government spending on Thursday to combat the coronavirus pandemic and its effects on the economy, with an initial focus on large-scale expansions of the country’s vaccination virus testing program and capability.
Biden will detail his plans, which he and his economic team have been perfecting for weeks, in an evening speech in Delaware. The efforts will cover the pandemic, the economy, health, education, climate change and other domestic priorities, said Brian Deese, the new director of the National Economic Council, at the Reuters Next conference on Wednesday. Leading Democrats in Congress have said in recent days that they are preparing for efforts to pass two bills.
“Right now, the president-elect feels that we need to act aggressively in both the rescue and the recovery,” said Deese.
America’s recovery after the recession pandemic has been reversed, amid a winter wave of the virus and new waves of restrictions on economic activity in cities and states. The Labor Department reported on Thursday that 1.15 million Americans applied for new unemployment insurance in the first full week of the new year, a 25% increase from the previous week. Another 284,000 claims have been made for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal emergency program for workers as freelancers who do not normally qualify for unemployment benefits. The country cut 140,000 jobs in December, the department said last week.
With millions still struggling, the initial stimulus package that Biden will reveal is expected to include money to complete $ 2,000 in direct payments to individuals and help small businesses and local and state governments, Deese said. Others informed of Biden’s thinking said he would also request that the first part of the legislation include an extension of the supplemental federal unemployment benefits, which expire in March for many workers, and more aid for tenants.
Plans for the first package also include a significant increase in spending on vaccine implantation, testing and contact tracking, Deese said, and Biden will seek enough money to allow most schools to open in an effort to increase force participation. of work.
The Biden Transition
“We need to open schools,” said Deese, “so that parents, and particularly women, who are suffering disproportionately in this economy, can return to work.”
Transition team officials did not say on Wednesday how expensive Biden’s proposals were likely to be or whether he would announce a cost estimate on Thursday. Last week, Biden said he expected his busy schedule to cost “trillions” of dollars.
The second tranche proposals are likely to be bigger than the first, and Democrats plan to pay for all or some of them by raising taxes on business and the wealthy. The second package is expected to focus on job creation and infrastructure, including hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy projects, such as electric vehicle charging stations, along with health and education spending, the Biden team said. Democratic leaders in Congress. .
The first bill is likely to be financed by the deficit, according to the Covid-19 relief bills that Congress passed last year.
Biden said he will work to build Republican support for his plans and that he will need 10 Republican votes in the Senate to overcome an obstruction. But top Democrats in the House and Senate are preparing to move quickly towards a parliamentary process known as budgetary reconciliation, if they can get only a simple majority in the Senate. Republicans used the procedure to get around an obstruction and approve Trump’s signature tax cuts in 2017.
Democrats on both sides of the Capitol – including Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who will lead the majority – have asked Biden to spend more than he had originally planned on the initial aid bill, people familiar with the talks said.
Many Democrats in the House and Senate pressured Biden this week to add items to the first bill, including targeted help for restaurants and temporary expansions of income tax credit and child tax credit, which could cost just over $ 100 billion. Economists say expanding these credits can dramatically reduce child poverty, when many low-income parents have lost their jobs and are turning to food banks for help.
Congressional Democrats can include expanding these credits in their legislation, regardless of whether Biden requires it. After Congress passed a $ 900 billion bill that did not include the full list of Democrats’ priorities in December, Schumer told committee members to draft legislation that would include expanding these tax credits, along with direct payments and additional assistance to state and local governments.
Democrats are also pressing Biden to include provisions in his proposal to automatically renew federal unemployment benefits and other aid until the unemployment rate drops to a specified level, should Congress stop approving more bailouts in the future.