Group items tagged

The provisions would cut the poverty rate among Black Americans by 38%, Hispanic Americans by 43% and White and Asian Americans by around 24%

In total, 16 million fewer people will be living in poverty in 2021

But there's one big catch. The benefits are all temporary -- a mix of one-time infusions and assistance that lasts no longer than a year.

"Getting this far is a huge win and a sign of progress in the conversation, as well as immediately putting money in people's pockets," said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, director of the income and work supports team at The Center for Law and Social Policy, a left-leaning group.

"I certainly don't think it's a done deal, but I think there's a lot more opportunity than there has been in the time that I've been working on these issues," she continued.

The enhanced portion of the credit will be available for single parents with annual incomes up to $75,000 and joint filers making up to $150,000 a year.

The key change is that the tax credit will become fully refundable so that more low-income parents could take advantage of it.

Families can receive a credit of $3,600 for each child under 6 and $3,000 for each one under age 18, up from the current credit of up to $2,000 per child under age 17.

It provides direct payments worth up to $1,400 per person to married couples earning less than $160,000 a year, heads of households making less than $120,000 and individuals with incomes below $80,000.

Those who have lost their jobs will continue to receive federal support through September 6. The relief package extends the $300 weekly boost to unemployment benefits and two key pandemic jobless benefits programs.

The bill also calls for making the first $10,200 of unemployment payments tax-free for households with annual incomes under $150,000.

Food stamp recipients will see a 15% increase in benefits continue through September, instead of having the enhancement expire at the end of June.

This amounts to about $25 more per person per month, or just under $100 per month for a family of four.

The package nearly triples the maximum credit childless workers can receive to $1,502, up from $543.

The minimum age to claim the childless credit will be reduced to 19, from 25, and the upper age limit will be eliminated.

This is the largest expansion to earned income tax credit since 2009.

Biden is expect to announce plans to secure an additional 100 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's coronavirus vaccine, according to a White House official.

Still, Biden will encounter significant challenges in the second half of his first 100 days as he looks to take steps toward marshalling through further legislation to boost the economic recovery, rebuild infrastructure, address climate change and repair the immigration system. Much of his legislative agenda faces an uncertain fate in the 50-50 Senate.

At the same time, Biden is facing pressure to hold his first press conference, after waiting notably longer to do so than his predecessors.

The president also made good on his promises to roll back a host of Trump-era orders and initiatives by rejoining the Paris climate accords and World Health Organization, halting construction of the border wall and ending the so-called travel ban on Muslim-majority nations.

The White House has also used its initial actions to convey the sense that Biden is getting right to work; his array of early executive actions far outpaced those of previous presidents.

Biden has done much of his work behind the scenes, engaging with elected officials and other stakeholders to confront multiple crises he has had to manage since taking office Jan. 20.

Biden has sought to manage expectations on the pandemic and regularly underscores the need to wear masks and social distance, an approach public health experts say has been a welcome change from the previous administration.

Biden said in an NBC News interview after the election that he wanted to send an immigration proposal to Congress in his first 100 days. He accomplished that on his first day in office, but the bill was introduced by lawmakers weeks later and passage appears unlikely anytime soon, if at all.

But the administration has offered mixed messaging on the reopening of schools, at first setting a low bar by stating that one day of in-person learning would qualify as reopening.

Biden’s relief proposal has made its way through Congress along partisan lines, and calls have increased among Democrats to do away with the filibuster in the Senate in order to avoid seeing the president’s agenda stonewalled by Republicans.

Democrats are cognizant of the limitations of their majority in Congress, but they note that there is still one more opportunity to use the budget reconciliation process to pass a major bill without GOP support

The ongoing surge of immigrant children at the southern border has also threatened to overwhelm the new administration

And while Biden has secured legislation to address the pandemic, the public health crisis will remain atop his priorities.

The administration projects the U.S. will have enough vaccines for all adults by the end of May, but officials need to overcome hurdles to distributing vaccines and addressing concerns of those who are hesitant to receive them while ensuring Americans continue to follow public health guidelines as the country inches toward herd immunity.

“This year especially so, in light of all of the disruptions and problems that we’ve had,” Mr. Inhofe said.

He also demanded that the bill include the repeal of what is known as Section 230, a legal shield for social media companies that he has tangled with. Republicans and Democrats alike have said that the repeal, a significant legislative change, is irrelevant to a bill that dictates military policy.

Those objections, registered late in the legislative process, infuriated lawmakers, who had labored for months to put together a bipartisan bill

Republicans have also divided over supporting the president’s determination to make one last and futile attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in Congress next week.

Lawmakers over the past four years tried but failed to override Mr. Trump’s vetoes of legislation cutting off arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations, and to overturn his emergency declaration at the southwestern border.

But his attempt to derail the widely popular defense bill, seen by lawmakers in both parties as an opportunity to secure wins for their communities and support the military, proved to be a bridge too far.

Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, tried on Friday to take up Mr. Trump’s demand to increase the size of pandemic relief checks to $2,000.

The bill contains a 3 percent increase in pay for service members and a boost in hazardous duty incentive pay, new benefits for tens of thousands of Vietnam-era veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and a landmark provision aimed at preventing the use of shell companies to evade anti-money-laundering rules.

The last time Congress overrode a presidential veto was in 2016, the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, after he vetoed legislation allowing families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia.

Democrats, who have long advocated increasing the amount of financial relief distributed across the country, plan to hold a vote on Monday to approve a stand-alone bill that would increase the payments to $2,000. It is unclear whether that legislation will stand a chance in the Senate, where Republicans have long been resistant to spending more than $1 trillion on pandemic relief.

the president was “posturing to make himself, to bring himself back as the hero of the American people”

You can see that readiness at work already in the internal Republican debates about the latest round of coronavirus relief. These debates are somewhat mystifying if you believe that the party has been remade in Trump’s populist image, or alternatively if you just believe that the G.O.P. is full of cynics who attack deficits under Democrats but happily spend whatever it takes to stay in power. Neither theory explains the Republican determination to dramatically underbid the Democrats on relief spending three months before an election, nor the emergence of a faction within the Senate Republicans that doesn’t want to spend more money on relief at all.

these developments are easier to understand if you see the Republican Senate, in what feels like the twilight of the Trump presidency, instinctively returning to its pre-Trump battle lines. The anti-relief faction, with its sudden warnings about deficits, is eager to revive the Tea Party spirit, and its would-be leaders are ur-Tea Partyers like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. The faction that wants to spend less than the Democrats but ultimately wants to strike a deal is playing the same beleaguered-establishmentarian role that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell played in the pre-Trump party — and of course McConnell is still leading it

the fact that neither approach seems responsive to the actual crisis unfolding in America right now doesn’t matter: The old Tea Party-establishment battle — a battle over whether to cut a deal at all, more than what should be in it — is still the Republican comfort zone, and the opportunity to slip back into that groove is just too tempting to resist.

Some of the Republicans rediscovering deficit hawkishness — including non-senators like Nikki Haley — are taking a Joe Biden presidency for granted and positioning themselves as the foes of a big-government liberalism before it even takes power, in the hopes of becoming the leaders of the post-2020 opposition

There is also that group my staffer friend mentioned, the senators who accept that Trumpism really happened, and who envision a different party on the other side.

You can identify the members of this group both by their willingness to spend money in the current crisis and by their interest in how it might be spent. That means Marco Rubio spearheading the small business relief bill. It means Josh Hawley pushing for the federal government to pre-empt layoffs by paying a chunk of worker salaries. It means Tom Cotton defending crisis spending against Cruz’s attack. It means Mitt Romney leading a push to put more of the federal stimulus payments in the hands of families with kids.

the trouble with both the Draper method and the “this happened, let’s learn from it” approaches to the Trump experience is that they assume not only that Trump will lose (a strong bet but of course not a certain one) but also that in defeat he will recede sufficiently to be willfully forgotten, or allow a more robust nationalism to supplant his ersatz, personalized version.

Children and adult dependents would be eligible for the full $1,400.

Enhanced unemployment benefits totaling $300 a week are set to expire on March 14, creating a de facto deadline for Congress to act. Senate Democrats struck a last-minute agreement Friday to set federal unemployment benefits at $300 a week, down from the $400 passed by the House, but extend their duration by a month, through September. In addition, the first $10,200 of the benefits for 2020 wouldn’t be taxable.

the restaurant industry will receive $25 billion in relief targeted at small and midsize restaurants and chains.

It allocates $8.75 billion to federal, state, local, territorial and tribal public-health agencies for distributing, administering and tracking vaccinations, with some funds specially dedicated to making sure the vaccination process reaches underserved communities.

While the package would make the child tax-credit changes only for one year, it is broadly expected that Democrats will seek to make them permanent in the future.

allow federal workers, including postal workers, to take as many as 600 hours of emergency paid leave related to Covid-19.

Vaccine development would also get a boost, with around $20 billion going to federal biomedical research for vaccine and therapeutic manufacturing and procurement, along with around $3 billion for a strategic national stockpile of vaccines. Another $25 billion would be spent on testing, contact tracing and reimbursing hospitals for lost revenue related to the pandemic.

Senate Democrats added a provision that would make much student-loan forgiveness free from income taxes, creating an exception from 2021 through 2025 to the normal rule that canceled debt is income

Not likely. Republicans see the bill as too large, saying it sprawls beyond pandemic aid and instead is a wish list of liberal priorities.

Republicans have used the budget-resolution amendment process to inflict political damage on Democrats and expose their differences on issues like providing aid to undocumented immigrants and raising the minimum wage. But they have been unable to strike many blows against support for the overall package, which enjoys strong approval in polls and has so far kept congressional Democrats united on its top-line priorities.

Fudge, who has represented parts of Cleveland and Akron in the House since 2008, was praised by Democrats for her years of work in Congress toward bolstering federal safety net programs and fighting racial inequities in the economy.

She is the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and served as mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, from 2000 until she was elected to Congress.

Fudge announced her resignation from the House on Wednesday afternoon after voting for Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan.

several Republicans fiercely opposed Fudge’s nomination over past heated criticisms of GOP lawmakers and her lack of expertise on housing policy issues.

Fudge will take over HUD at a challenging time for both the U.S. housing system and the federal department that oversees it.

More than 11 million U.S. households are facing homelessness after nearly a year of economic peril caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the housing affordability crisis that began long before COVID-19 hit the U.S.

President BidenJoe BidenManchin cements key-vote status in 50-50 Senate The Memo: How the COVID year upended politics Post-pandemic plans for lawmakers: Chuck E. Cheese, visiting friends, hugging grandkids MORE is also seeking to dramatically expand public housing and make sorely needed maintenance upgrades to the country’s existing supply of federally supported homes, a longtime goal of Democrats and housing advocates.

Fudge will face those issues with a HUD staff depleted by years of attrition and insufficient hiring.

Fudge vowed during her confirmation process to turn HUD around at a critical moment for the U.S. with a special focus on narrowing the racial inequities in the housing market that have been deepened by COVID-19.

While 7 percent of white households reported being behind on rent or mortgage payments in December, 22 percent of Black households, 18 percent of Hispanic households and 13 percent of Asian households had missed payments,

And while roughly 75 percent of white Americans owned their homes in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to the Census Bureau, only 44 percent of Black Americans did.

Ahead of the vote on Wednesday, Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., reiterated Republican opposition to provisions they consider "unrelated" to the pandemic.

The legislation's approval in the House came after Trump signed a sweeping coronavirus relief bill into law Sunday evening. That measure, which was negotiated on a bipartisan basis, provides for $600 in direct payments, but after a deal was brokered and passed out of Congress

"This proposal is a shot-gun approach," the South Dakota Republican said, adding, "If you really want to help people who need this the most at a time when we are running a $26 trillion debt borrowing every penny that we're making available to do this, we ought to sit down and figure out the most efficient, effective, targeted way possible. This absolutely does not do that."

Sanders this time tried to convince Republicans not to object by also calling for a vote on McConnell's alternative bill, which would combine increased direct payments with a repeal of the online liability protections known as Section 230 and the establishment of a commission to study voter fraud, for which there has been no evidence.

Hawley reminded senators that Trump backs $2,000 checks, expressing frustration it hasn't come up for a vote. "The President of the United States said that's the level he supported ... this is the number he has asked for .. and yet we can't even seem to get a vote on it."

"A mother in Virginia wrote: $2,000 means I can afford to feed my three kids. Now maybe we should give her a long lecture on macroeconomics and how well the stock market is doing,"

"These are working people. ... and all that they ask for, as I have said many times on this floor before, is a chance to get back up on their feet and be able to provide for their families, and I can't for the life of me understand why we cannot get so much as a vote on these bills," Hawley said.

The $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, which is expected to pass the House on Wednesday, will provide direct payments of up to 120% of a "socially disadvantaged" farmer or rancher's outstanding debt as of Jan. 1, 2021. A socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher is anyone in a socially disadvantaged group, those who have been "subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group without regard to their individual qualities," according to a House code.

"Let me give an example of something that really bothers me. In this bill, if you are a farmer, your loan will be forgiven up to 120% of your loan, not 100%, but 120%, if you're socially disadvantaged, if you're African-American, some other minority. But if you're White person, if you are a White woman, no forgiveness. That's reparations. What does that got to do with Covid?," Graham said on "Sunday Morning Futures."

"Here you have a group of people who barely can defend themselves and instead of these senators voting to support historic measure like this where I have been trying to get debt relief for Black farmers and other farmers of color over 30 years," he told Keilar. "I never heard Senator Lindsey Graham speak out against discrimination, where I been spat on and called racial epithets and had my USDA applications torn up and thrown in the trash can. He knows about discrimination ... I never hear

Biden, over the course of his first month in office, has relentlessly pressed lawmakers to pass his cornerstone legislative proposal, which includes funding for schools, vaccine distribution and infrastructure, states and localities, direct payments and extensions of expiring unemployment insurance programs.

Among those signed onto the letter are bold faced names including David Solomon, chairman and chief executive officer at Goldman Sachs; Stephen Schwartzman, the chairman and CEO of Blackstone; Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google; John Zimmer, the co-founder and president of Lyft; Brian Roberts, the chairman and CEO of Comcast and John Stankey the CEO of AT&T.Read More

Republican support, to this point at least, has remained non-existent, with even moderate GOP senators amenable to talks calling Biden's proposal too large in scale and scope given the trillions in emergency aid deployed over the first year of the pandemic.

Biden, however, has been steadfast that his mandate is to "go big," and in recent days has challenged opponents of his plan to outline specifically what they'd like to strip from the package.

"Now critics say the plan is too big," Biden said at the White House on Monday. "Let me ask the rhetorical question -- what would you have me cut? What would you have me leave out?"

"Strengthening the public health response to coronavirus is the first step toward economic restoration," the executives wrote. "The American Rescue Plan mobilizes a national vaccination program, delivers economic relief to struggling families, and supports communities that were most damaged by the pandemic."

Both Republicans and Democrats have also signaled support for legislation to strengthen the US supply chain in critical areas like public health and defense, and a number of Republican lawmakers recently attended a White House meeting to discuss possible legislative reforms

To pass their spending bill, Democrats are using a legislative maneuver called budget reconciliation -- which allows legislation directly impacting spending or revenues to advance in the Senate on a simple majority vote. In recent years, budget reconciliation has been used to advance policies that have little or no hope of securing bipartisan support. For example, Republicans used reconciliation in 2017 to advance their proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which didn't work in their favor.

If all goes according to plan for Senate Democrats, they'll be able to deliver a spending bill that Biden will sign into law sometime next week. Democrats will celebrate the accomplishment, but the win will ultimately cause long-term challenges and dissuade any Republicans who may have been open to working across the aisle from believing President Biden's calls for bipartisanship are genuine.

The Covid-19 relief law also included direct payments to Americans worth up to $1,400 per person; a $300 federal boost to weekly jobless payments; $350 billion to states, local governments, territories and tribes; roughly $20 billion to state and local governments to help low-income households cover back rent; rent assistance and utility bills; beefed up tax credits for families and certain low-income workers for 2021; $125 billion to public K-12 schools to help students return to the classroom' made federal premium subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies more generous; and $14 billion for researching, developing, distributing, administering and strengthening confidence in vaccines.

Democrats were able to pass the legislation without Republican support using the budget reconciliation process, which allows lawmakers to bypass the 60-vote threshold typically required for ending debate on the Senate floor and moving legislation forward. Instead only a simple majority is needed to end debate.

The White House is now turning to Biden's next legislative priorities: the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan. Negotiations between the White House and Republican lawmakers have been intensifying in recent weeks over the infrastructure proposal, and Republicans on Thursday offered another counterproposal.

The major provisions include: a $35 billion investment in new zero-emission energy technology (including solar, wind, nuclear, and carbon-capture storage); an extension of tax credits for wind and solar energy, which were set to expire; and, most significantly, a plan for phasing out hydrofluorocarbons, a small but extremely potent greenhouse gas used as a coolant.

In 2016, the Obama administration committed to an international agreement to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. The Trump administration, as you’d expect, renounced the agreement and then proposed rolling back regulations on HFCs. Instead, the president will sign a bill that would allow the United States to fulfill the terms of the treaty he renounced. A full international HFC phaseout will reduce global warming by nearly one degree Fahrenheit.

Manufacturers of heating and cooling units prefer a single, strict national standard than a patchwork of lax but variable state-based standards, just like car-makers do. The industry has lobbied for a national standard.

The larger lesson here is that, in the modern era, constructive legislation is still possible — as long as the issue stays below the radar. High-profile policy fights tend to become grist for right-wing media,

Speaking on Fox News, Graham characterized the fund as part of a Democratic "wish list" that passed despite Republican opposition as part of the $1.9 trillion package approved by the Senate over the weekend.

Estimates from the Farm Bureau first reported by The Washington Post indicated that about 25 percent of "disadvantaged" farmers eligible for loan relief via the $5 billion fund in the COVID-19 relief package are Black. The provision does not have language barring white farmers from applying for loan repayments or other services.

The House moved last month to debate a Democratic bill that would establish a commission to consider reparations, but the bill has not yet passed.

The tax package was a major victory for corporate lobbyists and Republicans. It makes permanent dozens of costly corporate tax breaks such as the research and development tax credit that had until now have been temporary.

Republicans said the bill largely continues existing tax policy, but ends uncertainty for businesses and families by making permanent many tax breaks that previously had to be continually reviewed and renewed, sometimes for decades.

"With this bill in place, Americans will no longer have to worry each December if Congress will take action to extend certain tax-relief measures," said Kevin Brady, the Republican chairman of the House tax-writing committee.

Though it falls far short of the comprehensive tax reform that both Republicans and Democrats have sought for years, the package is a rare example of congressional action on a major economic issue. Passage of the deal was helped by the shrinking in recent years of the U.S. budget deficit.

The House and Senate versions of the For the People Act were always something of a legislative Hail Mary. Democrats stitched together long-cherished goals such as advancing statehood for the District of Columbia; changes to redistricting laws in anticipation of a redrawing of House districts after the 2020 census; mandating early voting for 15 days before an election, 10 hours a day; and ending voter identification requirements.

Mr. Manchin’s opposition to ending the filibuster and backing strictly Democratic bills could have implications beyond voting rights. He supported the pandemic relief bill this year, which passed on party lines, but Democratic leaders are considering passing other measures under reconciliation, including an infrastructure bill that will most likely top $1 trillion.

Democrats privately expressed frustration with Mr. Manchin’s insistence that even stripped-down bills would need at least one Republican to get his support. Senators had been working on securing Mr. Manchin as a co-sponsor of the For the People Act, getting the bill to a symbolic 50 supporters, pleading with him to tell them what he could accept. But the senator has effectively given Republicans veto power, saying he does not oppose the substance of the legislation, only its lack of bipartisan support.

But during the Trump presidency, the Republican majority often skirted filibuster rules. The party tried to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act using reconciliation, for instance, but they could not muster the 51 votes. They did pass a steep tax cut that lavished largess on corporations and top earners without a Democratic vote.

Democrats pushed back on that suggestion, saying the erosion of support for the filibuster on their side stemmed from the abuse of the rule by Republicans. That was capped by a Republican filibuster late last month of the bipartisan commission to investigate the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6.

When Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) offered an amendment to the Covid-aid bill on Friday pushing for the Senate to override the rules and raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, eight Democrats voted against it, including swing votes Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona along with Mr. Coons.

A group of other Senate Republicans signed on to the proposal, with some additional GOP lawmakers saying they would be open to an increase.

But any Democratic effort to compromise with Republicans on a minimum-wage increase would need to contend with demands from progressive Democrats and activists to not back down from $15 an hour.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that Mr. Biden will use his “political capital” to help achieve a $15 minimum wage, and said he wasn’t currently considering a lower rate

Sen. Manchin has said $15 is too high for low cost-of-living states and said he could support a minimum wage of $11 an hour. Other Democratic senators had expressed concern about the rate, as well as its extension to tipped workers, who currently must be paid a subminimum wage of as little as $2.13 an hour, as long as they earn the full minimum in gratuity.

Many economists say a smaller total increase or a raise spread out over more years would cause less job loss.

a $12-an-hour minimum wage by 2025 would reduce employment by 300,000, while increasing wages for up to 11 million workers and lift 400,000 above the poverty threshold. A minimum wage of $10 an hour by 2025 would have little effect on employment or poverty, while providing raises for up to 3.5 million workers.

“If the progressive view is that it’s $15 or nothing, they may end up with nothing,” said Glenn Spencer, head of the Chamber’s Employment Policy Division.