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The House Budget Committee yesterday advanced President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill on a 19-16 party-line vote, The Hill reported. The bill must be marked up by the House Rules Committee before consideration on the House floor, likely on Friday or Saturday. The legislation will then have to be taken up in the Senate, where it is expected to face considerable procedural and political challenges. "We are in a race against time. Aggressive, bold action is needed before our nation is more deeply and permanently scarred by the human and economic costs of inaction," Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said at the hearing. The bill includes $1,400 stimulus checks, extensions to emergency unemployment benefits, funding for vaccinations and testing, $129 billion for schools, increases to child tax credits and earned income tax credits, and a plan to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) noted that the legislation is widely popular, with some 70 percent public support, including half of Republicans.

Democrats begin the final push for President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill this week, dropping any pretense of bipartisanship to quickly pass the package before an earlier round of benefits runs out, Bloomberg News reported. The House plans to vote as soon as Friday on Democrats’ stimulus package, setting up a Senate vote as soon as next week. Resolving the final hurdles, especially disagreement among Senate Democrats about a provision phasing in a $15 per hour federal minimum wage, would clear the way for Biden to give his first address to a joint session of Congress in March outlining his next policy goals, including a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure bill. “The Senate is on track to send a robust $1.9 trillion package to the president’s desk before the March 14 expiration of unemployment insurance benefits” from the last round of stimulus, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a Friday letter to colleagues. “We will meet this deadline.” In public, the focus will be on the House this week with a Budget Committee vote Monday and a floor vote on the bill as soon as Friday. The content of the bill is mostly locked in — the Budget Committee isn’t even allowed to make substantive changes — and there’s no sign of a rebellion by the few remaining Democratic deficit hawks imperiling the bill on the floor. The real action will be behind closed doors in the Senate, where Democratic leaders are hammering out the changes needed to get all 50 Senate Democrats and independents on board. Biden initially sought some GOP support for his stimulus proposal, which includes $1,400 checks for individuals making less than $75,000, resources for vaccine distribution, funds for schools to reopen, and $400 per week in supplemental unemployment insurance. But Republicans said that the plan was too expensive, coming after last year’s $2 trillion and $900 billion virus-relief packages enacted in March and late December, respectively. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged on CNBC yesterday that it's crucial to go big on the next round of coronavirus relief legislation, The Hill reported. “We think it’s very important to have a big package [that] addresses the pain this has caused — 15 million Americans behind on their rent, 24 million adults and 12 million children who don’t have enough to eat, small businesses failing,” Yellen said. “I think the price of doing too little is much higher than the price of doing something big. We think that the benefits will far outweigh the costs in the longer run,” she added, repeating a phrase she has frequently used to argue for a larger stimulus. The administration has been working with lawmakers, business groups and others on President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid and stimulus package. Republicans have balked at the price tag, but Democrats are increasingly indicating their willingness to pass legislation with or without GOP support.

Two top Senate Democrats said yesterday that they will keep pressuring President Joe Biden to wipe out up to $50,000 per borrower in student loan debt after he shot down the idea of doing so by executive action or without restrictions, Bloomberg News reported. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Elizabeth Warren for months have been pushing Biden to be more ambitious with executive action to cancel about $1 trillion in student loans, and they said they aren’t giving up. “Canceling $50,000 in federal student loan debt will help close the racial wealth gap, benefit the 40% of borrowers who do not have a college degree, and help stimulate the economy. It’s time to act. We will keep fighting,” they said in a statement. Biden appeared to dismiss the idea during a CNN town hall event in Milwaukee on Tuesday night. In response to a question from an audience member, Biden said he understood that debt can be debilitating and he would support some relief. “I do think that, in this moment of economic pain and strain, that we should be eliminating interest on the debts that are accumulated, number one. And, number two, I’m prepared to write off the $10,000 debt, but not” $50,000, he said. He suggested that there could be a system “to work it off” with public service jobs. Biden also said he didn’t think he had the authority to write off a larger amount through executive action. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Biden’s statement reiterated his previous position that he “doesn’t favor $50,000 student loan relief without limitation.” Psaki said Biden’s stance has been that relief above the $10,000 level should be targeted based on criteria such as income, the kind of debt, whether it was incurred at a public school, whether it was undergraduate or graduate debt. Biden has told Schumer and Warren that once his Justice Department team has been confirmed, he will ask them to review his authority to grant relief via executive action in conjunction with a policy review by his Domestic Policy Council, Psaki said. She said in the meantime Biden would be “eager” to sign a bill from Congress granting $10,000 in debt relief for borrowers. Schumer and Warren said previous presidents have used executive actions to grant relief. “The Biden administration has said it is reviewing options for canceling up to $50,000 in student debt by executive action, and we are confident they will agree with the standards Obama and Trump used,” they said.

Republicans are zeroing in on potentially hundreds of billions in unspent funds from previous rescue packages in their criticisms of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief plan, The Hill reported. GOP lawmakers, who are in favor of a coronavirus measure that carries a smaller price tag, say the combination of unobligated funds and an improving economic outlook mean Democrats need to scale back their ambitions for the latest relief bill. “It is estimated that approximately $1 trillion in existing COVID-19 funding has yet to be spent,” said Rep. Jason Smith (Mo.), the top Republican on the House Budget Committee. “Before President Biden and congressional Democrats try to pass trillions more in spending, the American people need, at the very least, a thorough and accurate accounting of the trillions of dollars already approved.” The funding argument has popped up at both committee hearings and on the Senate floor. "Now we're to a point where the Biden administration is proposing $1.9 trillion of additional spending,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, said earlier this month. “We haven't spent the money we've allocated, nowhere near the money we've allocated." Biden, stung by the experience of a scaled-down stimulus package in 2009 that contributed to a slow recovery from the Great Recession, says it’s riskier to do a smaller relief bill than a big one, a position backed by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.