U.S. Capitol: Glynn Wilson

By Glynn Wilson –

Nanci Pelosi’s House approved the amended Senate version of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 Trillion American Rescue Plan on Wednesday by a vote of 220 to 211, sending the historic anti-poverty legislation to the president for his signature. It could be signed and become law by the weekend, with $1,400 coronavirus pandemic relief payments on the way by then.

It took a rare, unified Democratic Party in the House to accomplish the act since not one Republican voted to give relief to the American people after a solid year of grief and pain from COVID and a stalled economy. Only one Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine, voted against the bill.

Related: A Solid Year of Fear and Grief

The legislation not only provides another round of direct payments to Americans making less than $75,000 a year. It extends federal unemployment benefits through the summer and provides billions for coronavirus testing and vaccines as well as relief for schools, states, tribal governments and struggling small businesses.

It was billed as not just an emergency pandemic aid plan that is one of the largest injections of federal aid since the Great Depression, but landmark legislation that expands of the nation’s social safety net.

“This legislation is about giving the backbone of this nation — the essential workers, the working people who built this country, the people who keep this country going — a fighting chance,” President Biden said in a statement as he said he looked forward to signing what he called a “historic piece of legislation” on Friday at the White House.

“The vote capped off a swift push by Mr. Biden and Democrats, newly in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, to address the toll of the coronavirus pandemic and begin putting in place their broader economic agenda,” according to The New York Times. “The bill is estimated to slash poverty by a third this year and potentially cut child poverty in half, with expansions of tax credits, food aid and rental and mortgage assistance.”

While Republicans argued against the plan’s cost of $1.856 trillion, public opinion surveys indicate that it has widespread support among Americans, including Republican voters.

Related: Broad, Bipartisan Support Persists for $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Package as Senate Debates Bill

Congressional Democrats and the president planned an elaborate public relations campaign to promote the legislation across the country to working class voters, especially the tax credits for children and enhanced unemployment aid through Labor Day. It will begin on Thursday with a prime-time address from the president. Congressional Democrats have already fanned out for scores of events in their states and districts to take credit for the success of passing the legislation, a campaign intended to build support for provisions they hope to make permanent — and to punish Republicans politically for failing to support it.

It is something of a historic accomplishment coming less than two months since Biden was sworn in, and nearly one year to the day after cities and states began to shutter to stem the spread of the coronavirus in March, 2020, when then-President Trump signed off on an executive order declaring a national emergency.

Related: Novel Coronavirus Pandemic Hits Hard, Threatens Global Recession

By the end of March last year, Congress passed the largest fiscal stimulus bill ever, with $2.2 trillion intended to flood the country with cash in an effort to stem the debilitating impact on the economy of the coronavirus pandemic.

Related: Congress to Pass Record $2.2 Trillion Coronavirus Economic Relief and Stimulus Package

“This is the most consequential legislation that many of us will ever be a party to,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said at a news conference after the bill’s passage. “On this day, we celebrate because we are honoring a promise made by our president, and we join with him in promising that help is on the way.”

Earlier, she had dismissed the lack of Republican support and said opponents would not hesitate to claim credit for the popular elements of the plan, saying, “It’s typical that they vote no and take the dough.”

As if to make her point, Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, tweeted approvingly just hours after the bill passed about the $28.6 billion included for “targeted relief” for restaurants. His post did not mention that he had voted no.

“I’m not going to vote for $1.9 trillion just because it has a couple of good provisions,” he later told reporters.

The party-line vote reflected a gamble for both Democrats and Republicans, according to The Times, because of the lessons of 2009 when Congress raced to address the Bush Great Recession in the opening months of the Obama administration. Democrats toiled to win at least some Republican backing for what was at the time the largest stimulus initiative to be considered by Congress.

Economists widely agree that the $787 billion stimulus law that resulted, which attracted scant Republican support anyway, was too small to address the crisis, and Democrats lost the House in the following midterm elections.

Now Republicans were gambling that voters would become disillusioned with the scope and price of the plan, the partisan process that yielded it, the increase in the federal budget deficit, and punish Democrats in the mid-term elections in 2022.

The large cost of the legislation, the second-largest pandemic aid bill after the $2.2 trillion stimulus law enacted just under a year ago, was possible only because Democrats hold slim majorities in both chambers, including a 10-vote margin of control in the House and a 50-to-50 Senate where Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties.

“I want everybody to think back to Nov. 4 — the day after the election — when we didn’t get the result we wanted in the House, we didn’t get the result we wanted in the Senate,” said Representative John Yarmuth, the Kentucky Democrat who leads the Budget Committee, at a celebratory news conference on Tuesday. “We weren’t sure whether we would have the presidency. And here just a few months later, we’re about to pass one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in modern history.”

While Biden had initially talked of bipartisanship, inviting a contingent of moderate Republican senators to the White House to discuss a potential deal, they were seeking to slash the size of the rescue plan considerably. The White House concluded that there was not a deal to be had so instead of scaling back the package to try to win them over and muster the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, Democrats turned to a legislative process known as budget reconciliation, which only requires a majority vote to pass major fiscal measures.

This plan includes another round of direct payments to American taxpayers, sending payments of $1,400 to individuals making up to $80,000 a year, single parents earning $120,000 or less and couples with household incomes of no more than $160,000. It includes $350 billion for state, local and tribal governments, along with $10 billion for critical state infrastructure projects. It includes $14 billion for the distribution of vaccines, $130 billion to primary and secondary schools, $30 billion for transit agencies, $45 billion in rental, utility and mortgage assistance, and billions more for small businesses and live music and sports performance venues.

Federal unemployment payments of $300 per week will be extended through Sept. 6, and up to $10,200 of jobless aid from last year will be tax-free for households with incomes below $150,000. The bill also increases child tax credits, providing $300 per child age 5 and younger and $250 per child ages 6 to 17.

It will take a fight to preserve some temporary provisions in the bill, including the expansion of the child tax credits. Families will lose it in a year unless Congress agrees to extend it or make it permanent, but Democrats have said they believe Republicans will be unwilling to take away the benefit and plunge millions of children back into poverty.

The legislation also contains a substantial, though temporary, expansion of health care subsidies that could slash monthly insurance payments for those purchasing coverage under the Affordable Care Act. For six months, from April 1 until Sept. 30, the measure will fully cover so-called COBRA health insurance costs for people who have lost a job or had their hours cut and buy coverage from their former employer.

Democrats were also forced to remove an increase in the federal minimum wage, which ran afoul of the budget rules, frustrating progressives. Democrats could not hold their own members together in the Senate to try to revive the measure, which would have raised the wage to $15 an hour by 2025.

Progressive lawmakers rallied around the final package anyway, vowing to keep fighting for more ambitious measures.

“I proudly supported the American Rescue Plan on the floor of the House of Representatives today, and our work is unfinished,” Representative Ayanna S. Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement. “We must keep fighting for policies that meet the scale and scope of this crisis and set us on a pathway to a just and equitable long-term recovery.”

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, the Democrat from Greenbelt, Maryland, spoke on the House Floor in support of the American Rescue Plan.

“Madam Speaker, the Democratic Majority in the Senate has taken action, passing an amended version of the American Rescue Plan that this House approved on February 27. The version they sent us back reflects the same commitment demonstrated by this House to take the big and bold action demanded by the American people, who are suffering the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

“President Biden’s plan, as reflected in this legislation, which is consistent with measures we passed last year to confront the challenges to our public health and economic wellbeing, achieves a number of critical goals. It put vaccines into Americans’ arms. It will put money in Americans’ pockets,” he said. “It will put children back into classrooms. It will put millions of Americans back to work and reopen businesses safely. And it will put at ease the front-line and essential workers who are in the public sector, like teachers and first responders, by ensuring that state, local, tribal, and territorial governments can keep them employed.

The American people overwhelmingly support this legislation, he said, with more than three-quarters in favor of its enactment. That includes nearly six in ten Republican voters.

“I’m surprised that more of our Republican colleagues are not planning to vote for this legislation,” he said. “I hope they will join Democrats in taking action to help the nearly 10 million Americans who are out of work, compared to this time last year. I hope they will also join Democrats in voting to extend expanded unemployment insurance benefits that would otherwise lapse for more than 11 million families this weekend – and to make good on our promise to send another round of $1,400 stimulus checks to most Americans. And I hope they will join us in supporting a massive effort at deploying vaccines and testing so we can defeat this virus. The American Rescue Plan means an end to Republicans’ failed approach of hitting the ‘pause’ button. It’s time we hit the ‘start’ button.”

Of course not one Republican voted for the bill.

“It’s time to start building back better through bold action. This is a vote to face our challenges with all of our strength and resolve,” he said. “This is a vote to have each other’s backs as fellow Americans in this time of difficulty. With our votes today, we can send this legislation to President Biden so he can sign it into law and get help to Americans now.”