GOP Turns to Delay Tactics to Stall Covid Relief Bill

By Yuval Rosenberg

Harris Breaks Tie to Start Senate Debate on
Covid Relief Bill

The Senate on Thursday afternoon began what promises to be a
lengthy debate over a modified version of President Joe Biden’s
$1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, with Senate Majority
Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) pledging to pass the bill this week
even as Republicans maneuver to drag out the process, likely
extending it into the weekend.

"No matter how long it takes, the Senate is going to stay in
session to finish the bill this week," Schumer said. "We all know
this will merely delay the inevitable. It will accomplish little
more than a few sore throats for the Senate clerks who work very
hard, day in, day out, to help the Senate function."

The debate began after the Senate cleared a procedural vote,
with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a 50-50 tie along
partisan lines.

What’s next: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) forced Senate clerks
to read the
entire 628-page bill out loud, a step that is
usually waived by bipartisan agreement. The reading started shortly
after 3 p.m. ET and is expected to take about 10 hours
or more, meaning it could extend well past midnight.

"We all know this will merely delay the inevitable. It will
accomplish little more than a few sore throats for the Senate
clerks who work very hard," Schumer said. And The Washington Post’s
Philip Bump calculated that
nearly 1,400 Americans will die from Covid while
the text is being read.

After the reading, the Senate will begin up to 20 hours of
debate on the bill, to be followed by a
"vote-a-rama" in which lawmakers can offer up an
unlimited number of amendments. That process could potentially
require votes on dozens of amendments, dragging out for hours and
hours. The key question for the vote-a-rama will be whether any of
the amendments will get enough support to be adopted — and whether
those changes alter the outlook for final passage through the
evenly divided chamber.

Changes in the Senate package: The Senate version of the
legislation differs from the House-passed bill in several important
ways:

* No minimum wage hike: It doesn’t include an increase in
the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, after the Senate
parliamentarian ruled that the provision doesn’t comply with budget
rules being used to pass the package by a simple majority vote.

* Tighter limits for relief payments: The Senate bill
lowers eligibility limits for $1,400 direct payments, reducing the
income level at which payments phase out completely from $100,000
to $80,000 for individuals and from $200,000 to $160,000 for
couples filing jointly. The change means that some 9 million fewer
households will receive a payment this time compared to the
previous round.

* Revised formula for state aid: Democrats tweaked the
formula for allocating some $350 billion in aid to state and local
governments, boosting money sent to less populous states and
diverting $10 billion toward "critical capital projects" like
broadband access, CQ Roll Call
reports. "There are also numerous new restrictions
on the state and local money, including a requirement that only 50
percent of the funds be made available up front, along with more
limited uses for the funds," Roll Call says.

The changes reportedly were made to help ensure the support of
moderate Democrats — and perhaps to court the vote of Alaska
Republican Lisa Murkowski in an effort to show bipartisan backing
for the package.

Murkowski indicated Thursday she is still deciding how to vote
on the relief bill and said she is focused on how the package could
help her state, including its tourism and seafood sectors. "I’m
going to see what’s in it. We already know there are some things in
it that are clearly not Covid related, but I’m looking at some of
the things that will provide a level of relief for a state like
Alaska," she
told reporters.

* Two transportation projects cut: The Senate bill
eliminates funding in the House bill for two controversial
transportation projects, one in California and one in New York.

Read about other changes in the Senate version at
CQ Roll Call.

The bottom line: A final vote on
Senate passage likely won’t happen until the weekend. The House
will then have to pass the Senate bill, but Democrats appear to be
headed toward delivering Biden his first major legislative
win.

Nagging Doubts About Biden’s Covid Relief Plan

Even as Senate Democrats prepare to push the $1.9 trillion Covid
relief package over the finish line as soon as this weekend, some
policy experts are still worried that the bill is poorly targeted,
focused on the wrong issues or just plain too big.

According to
The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein, Heather Long and
Erica Werner, the grumblings of discontent aren’t limited to
Republicans, whose opposition to the bill is both unanimous and
unsurprising, and a number of economists of various political
stripes. Some Democrats, including moderate senators whose support
is needed to pass the legislation, have also reportedly had second
thoughts.

One basic issue is the state of the economy, which continues to
gather strength according to most analysts, due in large part to
growing optimism about the pace of vaccinations. "The improving
economy and improving outlook on the virus has dramatically changed
the dynamic on Biden’s spending plans, but the bill has remained
largely the same," Bill Hoagland of the Bipartisan Policy Center
told the Post.

Tinkering with the topline: Given the improving outlook,
some economists say the package could be reduced. Constance Hunter,
chief economist at KPMG, told the Post that $1.5 trillion would be
enough, while panelists at the National Association for Business
Economics put the number at about $1 trillion.

Echoing the complaints of many fellow Republicans, Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) said this week that he thinks
the bill is too large, though without providing an alternative.
"It’s of a size that might have made sense a year ago … this is not
a year ago," McConnell said Tuesday. "We’re making extraordinary
progress with the rollout of the vaccines."

How much do states and cities need? The $350 billion
allotted to state and local governments in the bill is a sticking
point for many Republicans, who have long opposed what they
inaccurately refer to as a "blue state bailout" that would
supposedly aid profligate Democratic cities and states. "This bill
would reward bad actions, because states who have not managed
themselves well are the ones who are going to benefit from this,"
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
said Wednesday.

Most economists say that while states and cities need help, they
probably need less than the bill provides. Moody’s Analytics
estimates the need at about $61 billion, according to the Post. The
conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute puts the number
at about $100 billion, while the liberal-leaning Center on Budget
and Policy Priorities thinks it’s closer to $225 billion.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics who has spoken
in support of the Biden plan, told the Post that he would prefer to
shuffle some of the money around, moving some of the money away
from states and cities and toward longer-term plans. "If I were
king for the day, I’d scale back a few hundred billion on state and
local and use that money to help with the infrastructure program
that’s coming," Zandi said. "That’s a more effective way of using
the resources to get back to full employment."

But some liberals defend the $350 billion figure, arguing that
the need is real — and that the recovery effort should aim to do
more than return to the pre-pandemic status quo. "There’s no
economic rationale for cutting the state and local aid down,"
Lindsay Owens of the left-leaning Groundwork Collaborative told the
Post. "The idea we just need to get back right to January 2020, and
not a dollar more, is bananas. We should try to do better than
that."

Thinking longer-term: Some critics say that the Biden
bill is missing an opportunity to rework some of the country’s
social safety net. For example, Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden
(D-OR) wanted to adjust the unemployment benefit provisions so that
they responded to economic conditions rather than the whims of
Congress, but that tweak was dropped from the bill due in part to
concerns about the cost.

Other critics have focused on the bill’s failure to provide
enough money for housing assistance, child poverty and health care.
For example, while the bill provides $34 billion to increase
subsidies on the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges, it
provides a relatively modest $16 billion for state Medicaid
programs. "Expanding Medicaid would be a much more efficient way of
getting more people insured," Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family
Foundation told the Post.

White House sticks with the plan: For all the complaints,
the Biden administration is showing no signs that it wants to redo
the relief package. Although Biden signed off on tighter limits on
relief payments in response to concerns from centrist Democratic
senators, the administration continues to say that it’s far more
worried about doing too little rather than too much. "We’re still
at the height of a pandemic," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki
told reporters Wednesday. "We are not going to recover from this
pandemic tomorrow. The economic recession will not be recovered
tomorrow."

Some supporters say they’re sticking with the bill for the
simple fact that political constraints make it hard to craft an
alternative that is both timely and well-targeted. "This is not a
perfect bill," Jason Furman, who chaired the Council of Economic
Advisers under President Obama, told the Post. "If an economist was
designing it from scratch today, they would design it differently.
But nothing Congress does is perfect, and as written the American
Recovery Plan will be a major booster shot that will hopefully help
close the remaining gaps in the economy."

Quote of the Day: Powell Says Inflation Could Rise,
Temporarily

"We expect that as the economy reopens and hopefully picks
up, we will see inflation move up through base effects. That could
create some upward pressure on prices."

– Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell,
indicating at a Wall Street Journal conference Thursday that
inflationary pressures may rise for a time as the economy recovers.
Powell said any higher inflation likely won’t be enough to prompt
the Fed to raise interest rates. The prospect of rising inflation
has been the subject of increased economic debate lately, and bond
yields have surged in recent days as investors price in higher
inflation related to continued economic recovery.

Number of the Day: 202%

That national debt is on pace to grow to more than twice
the size of the economy — 202% of gross domestic product — by 2051,
up from 102% this year, the Congressional Budget Office said in a
report
released Thursday on the long-term budget outlook. "The risk of a
fiscal crisis appears to be low in the short run despite the higher
deficits and debt stemming from the pandemic," CBO said.
"Nonetheless, the much higher debt over time would raise the risk
of a fiscal crisis in the years ahead."

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