House passes $1.9T pandemic bill on near party-line vote

The House approved a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill in a win for President Joe Biden, even as top Democrats tried assuring agitated progressives that they’d revive their derailed drive to boost the minimum wage.
The
new president’s vision for flushing cash to individuals, businesses, states and
cities battered by COVID-19 passed on a near party-line 219-212 vote early
Saturday. That ships the massive measure to the Senate, where Democrats seem
bent on resuscitating their minimum wage push and fights could erupt over state
aid and other issues.
Democrats
said the still-faltering economy and the half-million American lives lost
demanded quick, decisive action. GOP lawmakers, they said, were out of step
with a public that polling shows largely views the bill favorably.
“I am a happy camper tonight,” Rep.
Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said Friday. “This is what America needs. Republicans,
you ought to be a part of this. But if you’re not, we’re going without you.”
Republicans
said the bill was too expensive and said too few education dollars would be
spent quickly to immediately reopen schools. They said it was laden with gifts
to Democratic constituencies like labor unions and funneled money to Democratic-run
states they suggested didn’t need it because their budgets had bounced back.
“To my colleagues who say this bill is
bold, I say it’s bloated,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
“To those who say it’s urgent, I say it’s unfocused. To those who say it’s
popular, I say it is entirely partisan.”
Moderate
Democratic Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Kurt Schrader of Oregon were the
only two lawmakers to cross party lines. That sharp partisan divide is making
the fight a showdown over who voters will reward for heaping more federal
spending to combat the coronavirus and revive the economy atop the $4 trillion
approved last year.
The
battle is also emerging as an early test of Biden’s ability to hold together
his party’s fragile congressional majorities — just 10 votes in the House and
an evenly divided 50-50 Senate.
At
the same time, Democrats were trying to figure out how to assuage progressives
who lost their top priority in a jarring Senate setback Thursday.
That
chamber’s nonpartisan parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, said Senate rules
require that a federal minimum wage increase would have to be dropped from the
COVID-19 bill, leaving the proposal on life support. The measure would
gradually lift that minimum to $15 hourly by 2025, doubling the current $7.25
floor in effect since 2009.
Hoping
to revive the effort in some form, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer,
D-N.Y., is considering adding a provision to the Senate version of the COVID-19
relief bill that would penalize large companies that don’t pay workers at least
$15 an hour, said a senior Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity
to discuss internal conversations.
That
was in line with ideas floated Thursday night by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a
chief sponsor of the $15 plan, and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden,
D-Ore., to boost taxes on corporations that don’t hit certain minimum wage
targets.
House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., offered encouragement, too, calling a minimum
wage increase “a financial necessity for our families, a great stimulus for our
economy and a moral imperative for our country.” She said the House would
“absolutely” approve a final version of the relief bill because of its
widespread benefits, even if it lacked progressives’ treasured goal.
While Democratic leaders were eager to signal to rank-and-file progressives and liberal voters that they would not yield on the minimum wage fight, their pathway was unclear because of GOP opposition and questions over whether they had enough Democratic support.
House
Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal, D-Mass., sidestepped a question on
taxing companies that don’t boost pay, saying of Senate Democrats, “I hesitate
to say anything until they decide on a strategy.”
Progressives
were demanding that the Senate press ahead anyway on the minimum wage increase,
even if it meant changing that chamber’s rules and eliminating the filibuster,
a tactic that requires 60 votes for a bill to move forward.
“We’re going to have to reform the
filibuster because we have to be able to deliver,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal,
D-Wash., a progressive leader.
Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., another high-profile progressive, also said
Senate rules must be changed, telling reporters that when Democrats meet with
their constituents, “We can’t tell them that this didn’t get done because of an
unelected parliamentarian.”
Traditionalists
of both parties — including Biden, who served as a senator for 36 years — have
opposed eliminating filibusters because they protect parties’ interests when
they are in the Senate minority. Biden said weeks ago that he didn’t expect the
minimum wage increase to survive the Senate’s rules.
Pelosi,
too, seemed to shy away from dismantling Senate procedures, saying, “We will
seek a solution consistent with Senate rules, and we will do so soon.”
The
House COVID-19 bill includes the minimum wage increase, so the real battle over
its fate will occur when the Senate debates its version over the next two weeks.
The
overall relief bill would provide $1,400 payments to individuals, extend
emergency unemployment benefits through August and increase tax credits for
children and federal subsidies for health insurance.
It
also provides billions for schools and colleges, state and local governments,
COVID-19 vaccines and testing, renters, food producers and struggling
industries like airlines, restaurants, bars and concert venues.
Democrats
are pushing the relief measure through Congress under special rules that will let
them avoid a Senate GOP filibuster, meaning that if they are united they won’t
need any Republican votes.
It
also lets the bill move faster, a top priority for Democrats who want the bill
on Biden’s desk before the most recent emergency jobless benefits end on March
14.
But
those same Senate rules prohibit provisions with only an “incidental” impact on
the federal budget because they are chiefly driven by other policy purposes.
MacDonough decided that the minimum wage provision failed that test.
Republicans
oppose the $15 minimum wage target as an expense that would hurt businesses and
cost jobs.