Bloomberg
House sends aid bills to Biden, checks for US paperbacks
(Bloomberg) – President Joe Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill overcame its final hurdle in Congress on Wednesday, with the House passing the bill in a 220 to 211 vote. , sending it to the president for his signature. Almost two months of running from the moment Biden first unveiled his American Rescue Plan, through tough Senate negotiations, until its final approval, largely in the form in which it was first proposed. Biden plans to sign the legislation on Friday. The bill is an important political victory for the new president, showing his influence over a Democratic Party in control of Congress by a minimal margin. At the same time, the party’s division on the bill foreshadows the difficulty Biden will have in implementing the long-term multi-trillion-dollar economic program that he wants later this year. Read more: Do I qualify for the last stimulus test? you will receive direct payments of $ 1,400, with the money starting to go out within a few days. The project offers new health insurance grants and child tax credits, while extending $ 300 a week for supplemental unemployment benefits until September. There is also $ 360 billion for state and local governments, a bailout for troubled unions’ pensions and funds to increase vaccinations and reopen schools. Contributions to the $ 1.9 trillion Plan’s GDP “I join President Biden in his pledge: help is on the way,” Mayor Nancy Pelosi said when the debate was concluded, noting that the vote it occurred on the eve of the coronavirus’s one-year anniversary being declared a pandemic and reciting the number it caused in America. “This legislation puts almost $ 1 trillion in the pockets of the American people.” Biden plans a prime-time speech on Thursday “to talk about what we went through as a nation last year,” he said at an event at the White House on Wednesday. “But most importantly, I’m going to talk about what’s next. I will launch the next phase of Covid’s response and explain what we will do as a government and what we will ask the American people. There is light at the end of this dark tunnel. “Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday in a statement that,” There will still be difficult months ahead, but eventually this law will help to clear the immediate crisis before our eyes, and we will begin to build a better post-Covid future. ”The Biden government and the Democrats are waging a coordinated campaign that will include the president and vice president to raise awareness and support the legislation, highlighting 10 ways in which they say it will help Americans, the White House deputy chief of staff, Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a memo on Wednesday. bond yields. Treasury yields have stabilized in recent sessions, helping the notch of the S&P 500 Index to record the best consecutive daily gains in a month on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose to a record high, closing above 32,000 for the first time. Relief legislation passed without a single Republican vote in the House or Senate, in sharp contrast to the five previous two-party Covid-19 bills promulgated by President Donald Trump, before the pandemic began to retreat amid the current vaccination campaign. Representative Jared Golden, from Maine, was the only Democrat without a vote. He also voted against the version passed by the House earlier. Republicans criticized Biden, Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer for rejecting more modest proposals. With the economy already recovering, they said the aid project was excessive and would increase financial risks. “You can’t just keep adding mountains of debt to hundreds of billions at once” without consequences, said Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican. “When you look at President Pelosi’s priorities, it is to spend as much money as quickly as possible on your socialist agenda.” Republicans were especially opposed to the more than $ 360 billion in state and local government funds provided when many states are not experiencing any loss of revenue during the pandemic. Senator Rick Scott of Florida has appealed to governors and majors to return to Washington any funding that exceeds “federal government-related Covid-19 expenses”. The bill is much larger than Wall Street’s initial expectations of what could be accomplished in a divided Congress. Economists this week were raising their growth projections to incorporate the impact. Morgan Stanley on Tuesday raised its 2021 forecast for US economic growth to 7.3%, an unsurpassed pace since the Korean War boom in 1951. Sustained support The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that $ 1.1 trillion expenditures under the relief bill would come out this year, with an additional $ 476 billion in 2022. Aid is targeted at lower-income Americans. A study by the Tax Policy Center found that the income of the poorest fifth of wage earners will increase by 20%, the highest among income groups. This will help to accelerate the money for the economy, as those at the bottom spend more of their budgets on basic household needs, including health, food and clothing. About a third of Americans plan to save their check, according to a survey by Morning Consult commissioned by Bloomberg News, much larger than the previous stimulus money. Approximately the same portion said they would buy food, and a quarter cited housing payments. “This is likely to hit the accounts before the end of the month,” said Aneta Markowska, chief economist at Jefferies LLC. She updated forecasts in mid-February, which put the US on track to achieve full employment in the summer of next year. “This is not only paid for quickly – in fact, it is spent very quickly.” The project provides a model for a potential long-term expansion of an American social safety net that has long been much smaller than its European counterparts. Democrats say the temporary expansion of nearly $ 110 billion in child tax credit will help cut child poverty in half, while forgiving taxes on unemployment benefits and relieving student debt will help millions more. on behalf of the American people since the Great Depression, ”said Democratic Party vice president Pete Aguilar of California. Read more: Biden’s path gets even more difficult when the stimulus clears the squeaker’s vote The heated policy surrounding the stimulus project may undermine Biden’s hopes for a bipartisan infrastructure, along with challenging plans for an immigration bill , voting reform, reform of war powers or weapons security measures. Such legislation is likely to be largely ineligible for the accelerated Senate procedure used to circumvent a Republican obstruction, known as budgetary reconciliation. “It’s a bad start and it will make things much more difficult to do,” said veteran Oklahoma Republican lawmaker Tom Cole, said members of the Republican Party could have cost up to $ 900 billion in relief. “I hope we can find common ground, but I just look at the legislation that they continue to present.” Democrats argue that Republicans are dusting off their manual more than a decade ago, when they criticized the Obama administration for deficit spending, along with a lackluster recovery, helped to gain control of the House in 2010. “Partisanship is at a high level within the congressional chamber because the Republicans chose obstruction over cooperation, ”said Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House’s fourth Democrat. the stimulus bill, and especially the direct payments that were advocated by Trump, are being employed by Democrats in their attempt to challenge historical trends during the midterm elections, keeping the House in 2022. While 2021 will be memorable as a phase “proactive fiscal expansion,” it is far from clear that this will last, Morgan Stanley analysts led by Michael Zezas wrote in a report dated March 10. “We would not conclude that this is the beginning of a long-term trend, as a change in power in midterm elections and / or a resurgence of popular concern about deficits could hinder the trend beyond this year, ”wrote the Morgan Stanley team. (Updates with Yellen’s statement in the seventh paragraph) For more articles like this, visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay on top of the most trusted business news source. © 2021 Bloomberg LP