The House passed on Friday the budget resolution amended by the Senate, setting out the process to approve President Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan without the need for Republican Party support.
The bill passed 219-209, with a Democrat joining all Republicans in the vote against.
“Our work to crush the coronavirus and provide aid to the American people is urgent and of the highest priority,” the spokesman Nancy Pelosi
Nancy PelosiHouse votes to expel Greene from committees because of the adoption of conspiracy theories Drama by Hoyer: Lead Democrat says Greene is putting ‘Squad’ at risk Impeachment managers call on Trump to testify MORE (D-Calif.) Said in a letter to the Democrats before the vote. “With this budget resolution, we have taken a giant step towards saving lives and livelihoods.”
The adoption of the budget resolution initiates a process called reconciliation, which can be approved by the Senate by a simple majority, bypassing a possible Republican obstructionist. The resolution includes instructions for Congressional authorization committees to draft legislation that will affect federal finances.
These instructions followed the outline of Biden’s proposal, which includes $ 1,400 stimulus checks, extended emergency unemployment benefits, funds for vaccine distribution and coronavirus testing, aid to state and local governments and increased child tax credits and earned income tax credits, among other things.
Pelosi said the Chamber plans to finalize the package by the end of the month.
The budget resolution arrived fresh from the Senate, which ran a marathon overnight, considering amendments to the original proposal. The Chamber approved an earlier version of the measure on Wednesday.
The final version, which passed at 5:30 am after 15 hours of debate and voting, included some strong signals from center Democrats that they expect changes to the proposal.
Democrats are counting on the party’s unanimity and Vice President Harris ‘tiebreak vote to pass Senate 50-50 legislation – any Democrats’ “no” vote could overturn a bailout bill.
The Senate passed amendments that call for stimulus checks to be more narrowly targeted and that funds be reserved for rural hospitals. The amendments were largely non-binding, but they served to signal Congress’s position on some important issues.
More controversial fracking amendments, the Keystone XL pipeline and whether stimulus checks would go to undocumented immigrants were eliminated in a final amendment offered by the Senate majority leader Charles Schumer
Chuck Schumer Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Blumenauer intend to demand that Biden declare a climate emergency Biden needs to follow his own advice: Agree Senate appoints first black Senate secretary MORE (DN.Y.).
Democrats said they supported restricting stimulation checks to undocumented immigrants, but argued that the language of the amendment would prevent children of citizens and undocumented immigrants from receiving the benefit, which would be a change from the previous relief round.
Biden has signaled that he prefers the bill to be approved with bipartisan support, but is willing to move on with Democrats alone or with just a handful of Republican Party votes that fall short of the 10 he would need to pass legislation in regular order.
On Monday, he spent two hours meeting 10 Republican senators about his $ 618 billion counter-proposal for relief from COVID-19.
Biden has consistently argued that exceeding the size of the relief bill is preferable to lessening, a lesson he says was learned the hard way from Obama’s stimulus project during the Great Recession, which many economists say was too much. small.
“One thing we’ve learned is, you know, we can’t do much here; we can do very little. We can do very little and choke, ”said Biden on Friday, before a meeting with Democratic House leaders.
Democrats will also have to deal with strict budget rules in the Senate that could put significant aspects of their relief proposal at risk, particularly the plan to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 by 2025.
President of the Senate Budget Committee Bernie Sanders
Bernie SandersSanders defuses dawn fight over minimum wage Night energy: Biden administration delays Trump’s reversal of migratory bird protections | Democrats seek to block new drilling in the Arctic | Democratic senator presses for clean electricity standard Senate signals broad support for more targeted coronavirus relief checks MORE (I-Vt.) Allowed an amendment by the GOP on the matter to pass a verbal vote. The amendment, he said, only restricted the minimum wage increase to $ 15 during a pandemic, which was not part of the gradual increase proposed in the bill.