Republicans Hammer Biden’s Big Stimulus Plan

By Yuval Rosenberg

Biden Signs New Executive Orders Meant to
Provide ‘Critical Lifeline’ to Millions

President Joe Biden signed two new executive orders Friday, the
latest in a series of actions intended to boost the fight against
Covid-19, blunt the economic effects of the pandemic and reverse
select policies of the Trump administration.

Saying the government needs to act “decisively and boldly” to
address the urgent economic problems facing millions of Americans,
Biden at the signing ceremony also made the case for his $1.9
trillion American Rescue Plan, which aims to support the economy
until the coronavirus crisis ends.

“We’re in a national emergency. We need to act like we’re in a
national emergency. So we’ve got to move with everything we got,”
Biden said. “If we act now, our economy will be stronger in both
the short and long run. That’s what economists both left, right and
center are telling us.”

National Economic Council Director Brian Deese emphasized the
point at the White House Friday, saying that while the executive
orders are no substitute for comprehensive legislation, they are
part of an effort to provide a “critical lifeline to millions of
families” suffering from the effects of the pandemic.

The pair of executive orders signed Friday touch on multiple
issues, including:

Hunger: Saying that one in seven households in America
report they do not have enough food — including as many as 12
million children — Biden directed the Department of Agriculture to
increase the value of benefits in the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program, more commonly referred to as food stamps, by
15% to 20% for approximately 12 million families.

Biden also ordered the department to consider raising benefits
by 15% for families that receive aid in place of free or
reduced-price school lunches, and to stake steps to make it easier
for people to sign up for benefits.

$15 minimum wage: Biden is establishing a $15 minimum
wage for federal employees and contractors, who will now be
eligible for emergency paid leave as well. The pay hike is to be
instituted within the next 100 days.

Stimulus checks: Biden is requesting that the Treasury
Department make additional efforts to deliver stimulus checks to
those who are eligible but have not yet received them, including an
estimated 8 million people who have yet to receive the $1,200
checks that were issued in the spring and summer of 2020. The
department may also take steps to improve the process for people to
receive relief checks in the future.

Worker rights: Biden directed the Department of Labor to
confirm the rights of workers to refuse employment if it involves
unsafe conditions, including potential exposure to Covid-19, while
remaining eligible to receive unemployment benefits.

Number of the Day: 30

President Joe Biden has signed a total of 30 executive
orders, actions and memorandums in his first three days in office,
according to CNN. Most are directed at responding to the
coronavirus pandemic or reversing policies set in place by former
President Trump. You can
review all 30 here.

Republicans Hammer Biden’s Big Stimulus Plan

Biden’s flurry of first-week executive orders comes as his $1.9
trillion proposal for the next coronavirus relief package faces
intense Republican opposition, including from moderates whose votes
might be needed in the Senate if the administration tries to pass
the legislation on a bipartisan basis.

Republicans say the Biden plan is too big, too costly and comes
too soon on the heels of the package passed in December. "We just
passed $900 billion worth of assistance. Why we would have a
package that big now? Maybe a couple of months from now," Sen.
Susan Collins (R-ME) said. "The needs will be evident, and we will
need to do something significant. But I'm not seeing it right
now."

GOP senators made clear this week that Biden’s plan would not be
able to get the Republican votes that would be needed for passage.
“I don’t think it can get 60 [votes]. Because even the people on
our side that would be inclined to want to work with the
administration on something like that, that price range is going to
be out of range for them,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune
(R-SD), according to
Politico. “Absent some change and economic
conditions, etc., I think that would be a very heavy lift.”

Seeking agreement – or not: Deese is planning to meet
with a bipartisan group of 16 senators on Sunday to try to make the
case that the economy needs support on the scale of Biden’s
proposal, and that the risk of doing too little far outweighs the
risk of doing too much.

“We’re at a precarious moment for the virus and the economy,”
Deese told reporters at a White House press briefing Friday. "What
I can tell you is, if we don’t act now, we will be in a much worse
place and we will find ourselves needing to do much more to dig out
of a much deeper hole.”

The administration’s push for another large relief package comes
as emergency unemployment benefits provided under the $900 billion
Covid package passed last month are set to expire on March 14.

Democrats, meanwhile, are also looking at bypassing the threat
of a Republican filibuster, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
reportedly
telling donors Thursday night that she wanted to
pass Biden’s plan in two weeks via a process known as
reconciliation, which would require a simple majority rather than
60 votes in the Senate. Some House Democrats have considered
passing a smaller, bipartisan package focused on vaccine funding
and direct payments to Americans, but party leaders reportedly have
yet to finalize their strategy.

The White House is reportedly pressing Democrats to be patient
as Biden works to figure out the contours of a possible compromise
deal. “Biden has spent the last several days on the phone with
lawmakers in both parties, and his team has started a blitz in
recent days not only to walk through the proposal with lawmakers
and staff, but also listen to their concerns and potential proposed
changes,” CNN
reports.

Debt concerns resurface: A number of Republicans have
based their objections to Biden’s plan in renewed concerns about
the nation’s large deficits and the rapidly rising debt.

The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell
argues in a Friday column that those rediscovered
GOP concerns are both hypocritical and misguided: “As soon as a
Democrat enters the White House, Republicans pretend to care about
deficits again,” she writes. “These foul-weather fiscal hawks
neglect to mention, of course, that the GOP’s prized 2017 tax cuts
added nearly $2 trillion to deficits — back when the economy was
doing okay. Nor did they note that — again, before the
coronavirus pandemic — the Republican-controlled Senate passed and
President Donald Trump signed spending bills that added another
$2 trillion to deficits.”

Rampell notes that, while the country does face long-term
structural budget challenges, economists including incoming
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome
Powell, among many others, have urged Congress to provide more aid
and set aside debt fears for the time being.

Yellen, as we told you earlier this week, told the Senate
Finance Committee that higher deficit spending is actually the

fiscally responsible thing to do right now. “To
avoid doing what we need to do now to address the pandemic and the
economic damage that it’s causing would likely leave us in a worse
place fiscally and with respect to our debt situation,” Yellen
said.

Biden has echoed that argument, saying again Friday that the
benefits of his plan will far exceed the costs and that our debt
situation would ultimately be less stable if we don’t provide
additional economic relief now.

Republican objections to Biden’s plan go beyond the cost to the
specific policies. “It’s reckless to borrow another $2 trillion on
top of $4 trillion already in the pipeline,” Sen. Chuck Grassley
writes in a Friday
op-ed for Fox News. “While more pandemic relief is
needed, some of the line items are a political pipe dream for
progressives.” Grassley again calls the Biden plan a “liberal
laundry list” and warns that Biden’s proposed $15 federal minimum
wage would “wipe out” small businesses that are already
hurting.

The bottom line: This weekend’s
meeting between Deese and centrist senators will be just one step
in the Biden administration’s efforts to navigate a path toward a
bipartisan compromise after its $1.9 trillion opening bid.
Congressional Democrats are preparing a more partisan approach as a
fallback option, but for now Biden reportedly prefers trying to
drum up Republican support and believes he can find a way to secure
10 votes from the Senate GOP. Either way, this process is likely
going to take a while.

Analysis of the Day: How Much Debt Is Too Much?

In his latest
newsletter, economist and former finance professor
Noah Smith takes an in-depth look at what he calls one of the most
important questions in macroeconomics: “How much can the government
safely borrow?”

Smith, known for his Noahpinion blog and Bloomberg columns,
offers up an answer that may surprise you: No one knows.


Smith writes:

“You might think that with the U.S. federal
debt having surged to over 125% of GDP as a result of
COVID relief spending — up from around 60% of GDP before the 2008
financial crisis, it might be time to think about borrowing
constraints. And you might think that with Biden planning

far more
deficit spending in the coming years, it might
be time to think about borrowing constraints.
“But in fact, we don’t actually know if it’s time to
think about borrowing constraints! It might be that we’re heading
into
the danger zone, or it might be that the danger zone is
still so far away that we could do a CARES Act every month and not
run into trouble for decades. Many people will tell you, very
confidently, that they know the answer to this question, but don’t
believe them. Our lack of knowledge about borrowing constraints
represents a deep, profound ignorance. And that ignorance means
that unless and until we actually find those limits the hard way,
the policy debate over deficits in the coming years will rest
completely on people’s priors, assumptions, and ideologies.
“Which is not a good place for us to be.”

Read the full piece
here, or scroll through Smith’s Twitter
thread on the topic.


RIP, Hammerin’ Hank Aaron, a true legend.
"Few figures commanded such universal respect and admiration
as Aaron did in the latter decades of his life, both within the
sport he dominated — as its onetime home run king and a 25-time
all-star — and beyond," The Washington Post's Dave Sheinin and Matt
Bonesteel
write.

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