WASHINGTON – Republicans are struggling to persuade voters to oppose President Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion economic bailout plan, which has strong bipartisan support across the country, although it is passing through Congress with only Democratic support. .
The Democrats who control the House are preparing to approve the package by the end of next week, with the Senate intending to move on with its own party line vote soon, before unemployment benefits expire in mid-March. On Friday, the House Budget Committee unveiled the nearly 600-page text of the proposal, which includes billions of dollars for unemployment insurance, small businesses and stimulus checks.
Republican leaders, looking for a way to derail the proposal, led on Friday one last attempt to tarnish the package, labeling it a “reward for progressives.” The bill, they said, spends a lot and includes a liberal wish list for programs to help state and local governments – what they call a “blue state bailout”, although many states facing disabilities are controlled by Republicans – and greater benefits for the unemployed, which they said would discourage people from looking for work.
These attacks followed weeks of various Republican objections to the package, including warnings that it would do little to help the economy recover and grow, that it would widen the federal budget deficit and possibly trigger faster inflation, and that Democrats were violating the mr. Biden’s calls for “unity” proceeding without bipartisan consensus.
The arguments so far have failed to connect, in part because many of their basic devices weigh heavily – even with Republicans.
More than 7 out of 10 Americans now support Biden’s aid package, according to a new survey by online survey firm SurveyMonkey for the New York Times. This includes the support of three quarters of independent voters, 2 out of 5 Republicans and almost all Democrats. General support for the bill is even greater than the substantial majority of voters who said in January they were in favor of a year-end economic aid bill signed by President Donald J. Trump.
Although Biden encouraged Republican lawmakers to join his package, Democrats are passing their bill through Congress through a parliamentary process that will allow them to pass it only with Democratic votes.
“Critics say my plan is very big, that it cost $ 1.9 trillion dollars; this is too much, ”said Biden at an event on Friday. “Let me ask them, what do they want me to cut?”
On Friday, Republican House leaders urged their ordinary members to vote against the plan, calling it the “Payoff to Progressives Act” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They detailed more than a dozen objections to the project, including “a third round of stimulus checks costing more than $ 422 billion, which will include families that experienced little or no financial loss during the pandemic.” Pelosi’s office issued its own rebuttal shortly afterwards, declaring that “Americans need help. House Republicans don’t care. “
Republicans also protested the process that Democrats employed to move the bill forward, citing dozens of legislative amendments that Republicans offered on various committees, which Democrats rejected. Last week, top Republican senators complained in a letter to the Democratic committee leadership about plans to bypass Senate hearings on the House bill, describing it as “outsourcing their own committee hammers to the House”.
Republican resistance is complicated by the continuing economic pain of the pandemic, with millions of Americans still out of work and the recovery slowing. It is also hampered by the fact that many of the lawmakers who opposed Biden’s proposals supported similar provisions, including direct checks on individuals, when Trump was president.
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“What they tried to do is separate individual parts of it,” said Representative Richard E. Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House’s Means and Resources Committee, in an interview. “But I think that on a general basis, you have to compare this to how well it is being received across the country.”
Some Republican lawmakers and advisers acknowledge the challenge they face in trying to explain to voters why they are opposed to the package, especially after reaching agreement with Democrats on several rounds of aid at the start of the crisis. Many of these negotiations were controversial and went on for months; Biden said he would not wait for Republicans to join his efforts, citing the urgency of the economy’s needs.
“We have shown in more than five bills that we can do this together,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia and one of the legislators who met privately with Biden to discuss both economic relief and infrastructure plans. “I think we will have to contrast what is there and it doesn’t make sense”.
While explaining her opposition to voters is a challenge, she said, supporting the bill is not an option for most Republicans.
“The price at the end is so excessively high and contains many strange things to gain any real support in the Republican Party.”
The scattered criticism is in contrast to the last time a president used the parliamentary movement, called budget reconciliation, to make an important proposal: the $ 1.5 trillion tax cut package that Trump and Republicans in Congress approved in 2017 without any Democratic vote. Just before the first House hearing on tax cuts, Democrats on the Pathways and Means Committee made a plan to label the bill as “tax fraud” benefiting the rich and the powerful, before the Republicans could sell it. it as a benefit to the middle class.
Trump’s tax cuts suffered a blow to public polls and gave little encouragement to Republican candidates in the 2018 legislative elections that followed. Republicans have had similar success in recent years, boosting the popularity of Democratic presidents’ signature legislation, most notably President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act in 2010.
Deputy Donald S. Beyer Jr., a Democrat from Virginia, recalled the warning he heard from his party leaders in 2017: “Republicans are great at speaking in the headlines and we are great at speaking in small print.” The Democrats’ ability to pick a strong message and keep it in the tax debate, he said, was “one of the few times we’ve run against the guy.”
Many Republicans remain confident that their attacks will begin to resonate in this debate. A Republican aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that with attention to legislation this week, members would continue to highlight clauses that are seen as long-standing liberal priorities, as well as money left over from aid packages. previous ones. Republicans also plan to question whether the new funds will deliver on promises to improve the economy and reopen schools.
“I think we have an obligation to ask questions,” said Rep. Tom Reed of New York, one of the moderate Republicans who initially spoke with White House officials in an attempt to reach an agreement. He predicted that as soon as voters focused on individual provisions that demonstrated the generosity and exaggeration of the package, they would turn sour in the general proposal.
“It’s human nature, and I understand, but can we try to move forward in a much more productive way?” Reed added, echoing the complaints of the process already percolating among Republicans in both chambers.
Polls suggest that this could be a difficult fight for Republicans, as many of the bill’s provisions are widely popular. In the SurveyMonkey survey, 4 out of 5 respondents said it was important that the relief bill include $ 1,400 in direct checks, including nearly 7 out of 10 Republicans. An equally large group of respondents said it was important to include aid to state and local governments and money for vaccine distribution.
They are equally divided as to whether they are more concerned that the plan is too big, further increasing the federal budget deficit, or too small, and therefore unable to rapidly stimulate economic growth.
The fragmented debate over the plan inside and outside Washington has also been largely overshadowed by the turmoil within the Republican Party itself, where the specter of Trump and his impeachment over the January 6 Capitol attack looms and threatens to continue efforts. focus on conservative efforts to frame legislation as excessive and ineffective. (Mr. Trump, just this week, was hammering Republicans for not being willing to accept direct payments.)
Given their small majority in the House and the rigid parameters that allow them to avoid obstruction in the Senate, Democrats can afford few defections, if any, to send the legislation to Biden’s table before unemployment benefits begin to expire. in March .
Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.