WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic leaders have powerful momentum on their side as Congress prepares for its first votes on the party’s $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill: Would any Democrats dare to cast the vote that drives away the new initiative from new President Joe Biden?
The slim majority of 10-vote Democrats in the House leaves little room for defections in the face of strong Republican opposition, and they have none in a 50-50 Senate that they control only with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaker vote. Internal Democratic disputes persist on issues such as raising the minimum wage, how much aid should be channeled to struggling state and local governments and whether emergency unemployment insurance should be extended for another month.
Still, with the House Budget Committee planning to approve the 591-page package on Monday, Democrats across the party’s spectrum show little indication that they are willing to embarrass Biden with a high-profile defeat a month after his presidency.
Such a setback would be an initial blow to both Biden and the new Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, DN.Y. It could also hurt Democrats in Congress in general by risking repercussions in the 2022 elections if they fail to unite effectively against clear enemies like the pandemic and the frozen economy.
“You think very seriously before casting a decisive vote against the legislative agenda of the president of your own party,” said Ian Russell, a former Democratic consultant. But he cautioned that lawmakers must decide “for themselves how their vote will be” at home.
The issue that sparked the deepest divisions is a move, largely by progressives, to raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour in five years. The current minimum of $ 7.25 took effect in 2009.
“It was the number one priority for progressives,” said Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., President of Congressional Progressive Caucus, in an interview last week. “This is something that we run and promise to the American people.”
A general relief bill, including raising the minimum wage, is expected to pass the House, and probably the Senate. But the fate of raising the minimum wage is most unstable in the Senate, where Joe Manchin of West Virginia, perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the chamber, said the $ 15 target is too expensive.
Senator Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., Suggested that she could also object. She said Democrats should not speed up approval using special rules that would let them avoid Republican obstruction, which would require 60 unattainable votes to overcome.
Manchin’s office did not make him available for an interview. Earlier this month, he told The Hill, a political publication, that $ 11 an hour would be “responsible and reasonable”.
Even more worrying, the Senate congressman should soon decide whether the minimum wage clause should be removed from the bill. Under the fast-track procedures that Democrats are using, items that are not primarily budget-related cannot be included, and it is unclear whether Democrats would have votes to overturn that decision.
However, even in a Congress where virtually all Democratic votes are needed, few or none are openly threatening to withdraw the entire bill, unless they get what they want.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., The main sponsor of his chamber’s minimum wage, said Democrats should “act boldly” and approve a package with the minimum wage increase. He responded indirectly when asked if he would be willing to commit to keeping the plan in the general account.
“Every Democrat understands that at this time in history, in this unprecedented moment of pain and suffering for working families, it is absolutely necessary to support the president, to do what the American people want and to approve this package,” he said in an interview.
Moderate deputy Brad Schneider, D-Ill., Also signaled distaste for intractable demands. The road to success is “pushing as hard as you can to get as much as you can now that you want to, not compromising your principles and knowing that tomorrow is another day,” said Schneider, leader of the New Democratic Coalition, a group of nearly 100 moderate House Democrats.
Republicans say the proposal is expensive, not aimed at people who need help most, and insufficiently encourages schools to reopen and it is a party democratic power game to ignore the GOP.
The project would provide one-time payments of $ 1,400 to millions of low- and middle-income people, increase child tax credits that could be paid in advance and monthly, and provide an additional $ 400 weekly of federal unemployment benefits through August. It would also provide hundreds of billions of dollars to state and local governments, closed schools, COVID-19 vaccines and tests and difficulties for airlines, restaurants and other companies.
History has rich examples of legislators who faced crucial decisions about whether to loyally support the priorities of their party presidents, with mixed results.
In 2017, three Republican Party defections – the most famous, a post-midnight denial by the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. – overturned the trademark effort of then President Donald Trump to revoke the Obama era Affordable Care Act. McCain’s vote generated endless enmity from Trump. Of the other two, Maine Sen. Susan Collins was re-elected last year and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski faces re-election in 2022.
In 1993, the new president Bill Clinton’s $ 500 billion deficit reduction plan was passed by the House by a single vote, after freshman Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky agreed to support him. Mezvinsky, who previously criticized the measure for not having enough spending cuts, voted “yes” after Clinton asked for her support in a phone call she answered in the Chamber’s locker room during the vote.
“I told him that I knew how important it was and that I would not give up, but I said it would just be the tiebreaker,” she recalled this week in an interview. She said she also said to him, “If I pull you over the top, you will lose this seat.”
Both scenarios took place.
The package was approved by 218-216, except for its decisive vote. And the lawmaker, whose surname is now Margolies after the divorce, lost her re-election two years later, in a heavily republican district on the outskirts of Philadelphia.
She never returned to Congress. But one of his sons, Marc Mezvinsky, later married Clinton’s daughter Chelsea.