The House on Wednesday passed a $1.9 trillion spending package, sending the bill to President Biden, where it will likely serve as a key first-term achievement. Not a single Republican voted for the bill.
The measure will provide a new round of $1,400 stimulus checks, enhanced weekly unemployment benefits, and expanded child tax credits, all aimed at helping individuals and families rebound from the coronavirus pandemic.
Democrats passed the bill over the objections of all House Republicans, who said the package was too expensive and dedicated mostly to wasteful spending unrelated to the pandemic.
“This isn’t a rescue bill,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said. ”It isn’t a relief bill. It’s a laundry list of left-wing priorities that predate the pandemic and do not meet the needs of American families.”
GOP SENATOR CALLS $1.9 TRILLION CORONAVIRUS SPENDING BILL AN ‘ORGY OF PORK’
The legislation, Republicans argued, dedicates about 9% of funding to combating COVID-19 and just 1% to the production and distribution of the critical vaccines.
But Democrats made the case the bill is desperately needed by families and individuals left jobless from the pandemic and by schools trying to reopen safely. About $350 billion will go to state and local governments hurt by a decrease in tax revenue. The bill provides $22.5 billion in rental assistance, which has been a top priority for Democrats, who say the pandemic has left many people at risk of losing housing.
“The American Rescue Plan is aggressive, no doubt,” House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat, said. “But researchers and health professionals have told us this is what is needed to scale up testing and to speed up equitable vaccine distribution. They said this is what is needed if we want to save lives and defeat this pandemic once and for all.”
Democrats won nearly unanimous support for the measure among their own caucus members despite initial anger by their liberal wing after the Senate made changes to the bill last week.
Senate Democrats were forced to strip out a provision mandating a $15 minimum wage, and they reduced the income threshold for those who will be eligible for stimulus checks. The Senate bill also cut the weekly federal jobless pay enhancement from $400 to $300.
Democrats are now examining ways to make parts of the bill permanent, including Medicaid expansion incentives for states and tax credits for children. Proponents of those benefits say they are needed in the long term to help low-income families beyond the pandemic.
The legislation, Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky said, “marks the end of a decades-long successful battle by big corporations and the super-rich in this country for trickle-down economics.”
Republicans said the measure does little to open the nation’s many shuttered school systems since most of the $130 billion in funding provided by the bill will not be allocated until next year and is not tied to requiring schools to open.
The measure allows prison inmates to receive stimulus checks, and it provides up to $21,000 in paid leave to federal employees who have children at home enrolled in virtual schooling.
Republicans also pointed out a significant chunk of nearly $4 billion in existing federal COVID-19 aid has not been spent.
McCarthy said the sum total of all congressional COVID-19 spending after today will top $5.5 trillion, more than the cost of World War II.
“This so-called ‘relief’ bill will end up costing every taxpayer in America more than $5000 each,” McCarthy said.
But Democrats argued the massive spending package is exactly what the nation is demanding after a year of OVID-19 and goes even further to alleviate longstanding poverty with, according to Rep. Earl Blumenauer, “priorities long neglected.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“We heard the American people,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, said. “And we went big.”
