WASHINGTON – The House approved a $ 1.9 trillion pandemic aid package early Saturday, 219-212, which includes $ 1,400 checks for most Americans and billions of dollars for schools, state and local governments and companies.
Republicans are overwhelmingly against the bill, raising concerns that spending is much more than necessary and designed to promote political priorities that go beyond helping Americans overcome the pandemic. Democrats and President Joe Biden counter that a robust aid package is needed to prevent a long and painful recovery from the pandemic.
The Democrats’ goal is for the relief from COVID-19 to be approved by mid-March, when extra unemployment and other pandemic aids expire. The Senate, which Democrats control with the vice president’s tiebreaker vote, will consider the next bill.
A look at some highlights of the legislation:
MORE CHECKS
The legislation offers a discount of $ 1,400 for a single contributor, or $ 2,800 for a couple who enroll together, plus $ 1,400 per dependent. Individuals earning up to $ 75,000 will receive the full amount, as will couples with incomes up to $ 150,000.
The size of the check would decrease for those who earn a little more, with a forced cut of $ 100,000 for individuals and $ 200,000 for couples.
Some Republicans want to reduce the size of the discount, as well as the pool of Americans eligible for it, but Biden insisted on checks for $ 1,400, saying “this is what was promised to the American people”. The new round of checks will cost the government about $ 422 billion.
GREATER TAX RECOVERY FOR FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN
Under current law, most taxpayers can reduce their federal income tax account by up to $ 2,000 per child. The package being approved by the House would increase the tax reduction to $ 3,000 for each child aged 6 to 17 and $ 3,600 for each child under 6.
The legislation also provides for payments to be made monthly, rather than in a single amount. If the Treasury Secretary determines that this is not feasible, payments should be made as often as possible.
In addition, families would receive full credit, regardless of how little they earned in a year, even if only a few hundred dollars, leading to criticism that the changes would serve as a disincentive to work. Add the $ 1,400 for individual checks and other proposal items and the legislation would cut the number of children living in poverty by more than half, according to an analysis by Columbia University’s Center for Poverty and Social Policy.
AID TO STATES AND CITIES
The legislation would send $ 350 billion to state and local governments and tribal governments. While Republicans in Congress were largely opposed to this initiative, Biden’s pressure has some support from the Republican Party between governors and mayors.
Many communities have suffered a blow to their tax base, as millions of people have lost their jobs and people stay at home and avoid restaurants and shops to avoid receiving COVID-19. Many areas have also seen spending rise while working to treat patients and increase vaccination.
But the impact varies from state to state and from city to city. Critics say the funding is not properly targeted and is much more than necessary, with billions of dollars allocated last spring to states and communities that have not yet been spent.
HELP SCHOOLS
The project calls for $ 130 billion in additional school aid for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The money would be used to reduce class sizes and modify classrooms to increase social distance, install ventilation systems and purchase personal protective equipment. The money could also be used to increase the hiring of nurses, counselors and to provide summer school.
College and university spending would be increased by $ 40 billion, with money used to defray an institution’s pandemic-related expenses and to provide emergency aid to students to cover expenses such as food, housing and computer equipment.
AID TO COMPANIES
The bill offers another round of relief to qualified airlines and contractors, $ 15 billion, as long as they refrain from laying off workers or cutting wages until September. It is the third round of support for airlines.
A new program for restaurants and bars hit by the pandemic would receive $ 25 billion. Grants provide up to $ 10 million per entity with a limit of $ 5 million per physical location. Grants can be used to cover payroll, rent, utilities and other operating expenses.
The bill also provides another $ 7.25 billion for the Check Protection Program, a small fraction of what was allocated in previous legislation. The loans are designed to help borrowers meet their operating and payroll costs and can potentially be forgiven.
HELP FOR THE UNEMPLOYED
The federal government’s expanded unemployment benefits would be extended, rising from $ 300 a week to $ 400 a week. This is in addition to what beneficiaries are receiving through their state unemployment insurance program.
HEALTH CARE
The bill provides money for key elements of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 response, while trying to promote long-standing Democratic priorities, such as increasing coverage of the Obama-era Affordable Care Act.
In Obamacare, he represents a fiscal carrot in front of a dozen states, mainly in the South, that have not yet adopted the law’s Medicaid expansion to cover more low-income adults. Whether such a sweetener would be enough to start eroding long-standing Republican opposition to the expansion of Medicaid is uncertain.
The project provides for $ 46 billion to expand federal, state and local testing for COVID-19 and to improve contract tracking capabilities with new investments to expand laboratory capacity and set up mobile test units. It also contains about $ 14 billion to accelerate the distribution and administration of COVID-19 vaccines across the country.
INCREASING THE MINIMUM WAGE
The bill would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour by June 2025 and then adjust to increase at the same rate as the average hourly wage. However, this provision is not expected to survive in the final bill. The Senate congressman decided that he could not be included in the economic relief package COVID-19 under the process that Democrats decided to undertake to get a bill passed by a simple majority.
Biden predicted this result. Still, the decision was a painful setback for most Democratic lawmakers, who said that the higher minimum wage would increase the wages of millions of Americans. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office had projected that the new federal minimum wage would lift about 900,000 people out of poverty once it was fully in place. But Republicans said mandatory salary increases would make small businesses more difficult to survive and pointed to CBO’s projection that around 1.4 million jobs would be lost as employers looked for ways to offset their higher personnel costs.