%1

President Joe Biden’s imperative of swiftly passing his $1.9 trillion pandemic-relief program faces one of its final hurdles: settling disputes among Senate Democrats over how to ensure aid gets to those who truly need it, Bloomberg News reported. With Republicans accusing Democrats of advancing a mammoth spending bill just as the economy is poised to accelerate, a handful of moderate senators is pushing for changes that reduce the risk of assistance flowing to households relatively unscathed by the crisis or to individuals who’d otherwise head back to work. The Biden administration has consistently argued that the risk of going too small is greater than the danger of excess spending. The president has urged Democrats, above all, to get the bill passed quickly. The Senate is planning to formally open debate on the pandemic-relief bill as soon as Wednesday afternoon. Senior Democratic lawmakers gave every indication that their caucus will be able to sort through the debate over potential tweaks to the proposed $400-a-week supplemental unemployment benefit and $1,400 stimulus checks included in the House version of the aid bill. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the package is on track to get to Biden by March 14, when the current benefit of $300 a week in help to the jobless runs out. The House version of the aid plan bumps that benefit up to $400 a week through August, and that’s been a point of contention. Joe Manchin of West Virgina and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire want to keep the level at $300. Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders is among those pushing for the higher total.

A group of Democratic senators is urging President Biden to include recurring direct payments for some Americans in his forthcoming coronavirus recovery plan, The Hill reported. A letter spearheaded by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) calls for Biden’s forthcoming Build Back Better proposal to fund recurring direct payments and automatic unemployment insurance extensions that are tied to economic conditions. That would be on top of the one-time payments of $1,400 per person that are included in the $1.9 trillion relief package the House passed last week. The letter has attracted at least nine other signatories, including the chairs of the Senate’s three major financial committees, and will be circulated on Capitol Hill today to garner further support. The letter does not specify a dollar amount for the recurring payments.

The House approved President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic rescue plan in a 219 to 212 vote early Saturday morning, sending the measure to the Senate as Democrats race to pass it into law before boosted unemployment payments expire next month, <em>Politico</em> reported. All but two Democrats supported the sprawling coronavirus relief package, with zero Republicans backing it — a major step toward enacting the White House’s first major legislative priority amid dueling public health and economic crises. Days after the U.S. marked 500,000 deaths to the virus, the Democrats’ COVID aid bill would send $1,400 stimulus checks to millions of Americans, boost unemployment payments and increase the child tax credit. It would also provide billions of dollars in aid to small businesses, states and efforts to test for and vaccinate against the coronavirus. But House GOP leaders, who kept their members in line against the bill, have argued the price tag is too high, with programs that are unrelated to fighting the virus. If passed, the package will be one of the largest ever approved by Congress, and the fifth major piece of legislation approved since the pandemic began. The Senate will take up the measure this week, where top Democrats will be forced to grapple with a major setback to Biden’s plan — their push to include a long-sought minimum wage increase has officially run afoul of the Senate’s arcane budget rules. For now though, the House package still includes that federal minimum wage hike to $15 an hour, assuring minimal drama in the lower chamber, and forcing Senate Republicans to formally nix it.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, yesterday introduced the COVID-19 Bankruptcy Relief Extension Act, bipartisan legislation to temporarily extend COVID-19 bankruptcy relief provisions enacted as part of the March 2020 CARES Act and December 2020 omnibus appropriations bill. The bill would extend for an additional year CARES Act bankruptcy provisions that are set to expire on March 27, 2021. Click here to read the full press release on the legislations provisions.

Get the insight, analysis and statistics you need on the Small Business Reorganization Act and subchapter V elections by visiting ABI’s SBRA Resources website.

In a blow to Democrats, the Senate parliamentarian ruled the chamber cannot include President Joe Biden’s proposed $15-an-hour minimum wage in a $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill the party aims to pass without Republican votes, Reuters reported. Democrats and progressives had hoped to include the minimum wage increase in the legislation to help cushion the economic blow of the coronavirus pandemic and better compensate low-wage workers who have spent months on the front lines of the health crisis as essential workers. Democrats are trying to advance the COVID-19 bill under a special “budget reconciliation” process that would allow them to pass it in the Senate using a simple majority, so they will not need Republican support. But there are rules that limit what can be included using that process, and it is the job of Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to determine what is allowed.

The Biden administration expanded unemployment insurance eligibility Thursday to include workers who refused job offers at unsafe worksites, making good on a pledge to reduce the pressure on people who say they have been forced to choose between staying healthy or getting a paycheck, the Washington Post reported. The Department of Labor made the shift Thursday in response to a January executive order from President Biden that broadened the eligibility of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) to include workers whose unemployment benefits were denied because they refused to return to workplaces that were not in compliance with coronavirus health and safety standards or turned down positions because of those concerns. The change in eligibility goes into effect immediately, but officials cautioned that it could take at least a month, if not longer, for workers’ claims to be approved, given the significant delays that have plagued state unemployment agencies. Workers eligible under the new guidelines will receive backdated payments for unemployment claims dating to the beginning of the pandemic, when the PUA program was created to help gig workers, self-employed workers and others who stopped working to take care sick of a sick relative or take care of a school-aged child. They will also be eligible for the supplemental $600 a week bonus that the federal government has approved through the end of July.

A tsunami of fraudulent unemployment claims sweeping the nation has cost states and the federal government tens of billions of dollars in payments, many to overseas crime syndicates and nefarious hackers who have gained access to Americans’ Social Security numbers and other identifying information, The Hill reported. The scope of the crisis is not yet known, though the early estimates are eye-popping: California officials have identified at least $11.4 billion in fraudulent claims, and they suspect another $20 billion may be fraudulent. New York officials have referred more than 400,000 fraudulent claims to federal investigators, totaling $5.5 billion in claims, most of which were caught before they were paid. In Ohio, more than 100,000 people have reported potential fraudulent activity in their names to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Ohio and Michigan officials each estimated the potential fraud cost their states hundreds of millions of dollars. Colorado’s Department of Labor and Employment has flagged more than a million applications for benefits as potential fraud. Maryland has identified a quarter million phony claims. Massachusetts reported last year it had paid out $242 million in improper claims.

Senior executives from more than 150 companies are voicing support for President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package in a letter to congressional leaders urging them to pass coronavirus relief, Bloomberg News reported. The letter is signed by leaders across industries, 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; and John Stankey the CEO of AT&T. “We write to urge immediate and large-scale federal legislation to address the health and economic crises brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the executives wrote in the letter. “Congress should act swiftly and on a bipartisan basis to authorize a stimulus and relief package along the lines of the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed American Rescue Plan.” The letter’s signatories included several past supporters of former President Donald Trump, including Schwartzman, one of the biggest contributors to Trump’s re-election bid from the world of high finance, and New York real estate magnate Richard LeFrak. Biden’s bill includes a range of spending measures, including for distributing vaccines, reopening schools, support for state and local governments and the direct payments that the president promised during the campaign season. Democrats are moving forward with the bill despite not having much support from Republicans, who have called the measure too expensive and unnecessarily broad.