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The House Ways and Means Committee yesterday advanced a key portion of Democrats’ coronavirus relief package that includes stimulus payments of up to $1,400 per person and an expansion of the child tax credit, The Hill reported. The committee approved the tax-related portion of the relief package by a party-line vote of 24-18. It now heads to the House Budget Committee, which will combine the portions of the relief package that are approved by a wide array of House panels. House Democrats started unveiling their relief package on Monday and have been spending the week moving the measure through relevant committees. The relief package is based on a $1.9 trillion proposal that President Biden floated last month. The tax-focused portion of the bill that the Ways and Means Committee advanced yesterday contains some of the provisions in the bill that have received the most attention from lawmakers and members of the public. The measure proposes direct payments of up to $1,400 per person, including adult dependents such as college students and elderly parents, who were not eligible for the first two rounds of payments. Ahead of the bill’s release, lawmakers had debated what the eligibility requirements should be for the $1,400 payments. The bill includes the same income limits for receiving full payment amounts as the first two rounds of payments, but changes how the payment amounts would phase out above those thresholds in an effort to prevent high-income households from getting the payments. Read more.

In related news, a U.S. House committee yesterday approved a proposal to give airlines another $14 billion in payroll assistance as part of a broader COVID-19 relief package that is working its way through Congress, Reuters reported. It would be the third round of support for the pandemic-hit industry. American Airlines and United Airlines have warned of some 27,000 furloughs without an extension of the current package that expires on April 1. The House of Representatives Financial Services Committee on a 29-24 vote approved the $14 billion for airlines and $1 billion for contractors to cover payroll through September. The funds will be included in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill proposed by President Joe Biden, whose initial plan did not include new money for airlines. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that she expects lawmakers to complete legislation based on the bill by the end of February. Read more. 

President Biden said yesterday that he agrees with a proposal from House Democrats to begin phasing out the next round of direct coronavirus relief payments to Americans who make more than $75,000, a key sticking point among some in the party, The Hill reported. Biden signaled his support for the threshold during a meeting with the heads of several major corporations in the Oval Office. He hosted the business leaders to solicit buy-in on his $1.9 trillion relief proposal as well as to discuss future economic measures such as an infrastructure package and an increase to the minimum wage. Biden was joined in the Oval Office by Vice President Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The meeting comes as the White House and congressional Democrats work to push through Biden's economic relief package, which would send direct payments to millions of Americans, provide funding for schools as well as state and local governments, and boost money for vaccine distribution. House Democrats on Monday night released key portions of their coronavirus relief bill. The proposal called for direct payments of $1,400 to single taxpayers with annual income up to $75,000 and married couples that make up to $150,000.

Democrats are calling on President Biden to use the pandemic to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower. What many people forget is that in 2010 they used the last recession to justify a federal takeover of student loans that have since more than doubled to $1.6 trillion, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial. Now they’re using the pandemic to justify loan write-offs they said would never happen. The student loan conundrum began in 2010 when Democrats used budget “savings” from ending the federal guaranteed-loan program to pay for the Affordable Care Act, according to the editorial. An analysis for the Education Department last year estimated that $435 billion in student loans (excluding private originated loans that are federally guaranteed) will eventually be written off. One reason: Democrats in 2010 created “income-based repayment plans” that limited borrower monthly payments to 10% of discretionary income and discharged the remaining balance after 20 years. These plans now comprise a third of new undergraduate and nearly 60% of graduate loans. Since many borrowers are making only de minimis payments, their balances continue to grow and accrue interest, although most will be forgiven. In other words, the feds are already set to write down a large chunk of debt. A University of Chicago study in December estimated that the top 10% of households by income would receive seven times as much benefit from a $50,000 loan write-down as the bottom 10%. Doctors and lawyers with six-figure salaries should be able to repay their loans and don’t need the $50,000 write-off, according to the editorial. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

*The views expressed in this commentary are from the author/publication cited, are meant for informative purposes only, and are not an official position of ABI.

House Democrats yesterday released key portions of their coronavirus relief package, including a section that would provide $1,400 checks to most Americans, The Hill reported. As with previous rounds of direct payments, single taxpayers with annual income up to $75,000 and married couples that make up to $150,000 would qualify for the full payment amounts. However, the payment amounts above those thresholds would phase out at a faster rate than the payments from the first two rounds. Single filers with income above $100,000 and married couples with income above $200,000 would not be eligible for any payments. The release of bill text came after policymakers and economists debated what the income eligibility requirements should be for the payments. Republicans and some centrist Democrats argued that the payments should be more targeted to lower-income households because those households are most in need of relief and most likely to spend the money quickly. But progressives argued that the income requirements shouldn't be tightened so people who lost substantial amounts of income during the pandemic could quickly receive their payments. Eligible households would be able to receive payments of up to $1,400 per person, including for adult dependents, who were left out of the previous rounds. The bill directs the Treasury Department to issue payments to people based on their 2019 or 2020 tax returns, and it allows the department to make payments to non-filers based on information available to it. Read more. 

In related news, Democrats yesterday released a sweeping plan to provide more than $50 billion in additional assistance to U.S. airlines, transit systems, airports and passenger railroad Amtrak and create a $3 billion program to assist aviation manufacturers with payroll costs, Reuters reported. The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief proposal will provide $30 billion to transit agencies, $14 billion for passenger airlines, $8 billion to U.S. airports, $1 billion for airline contractors and $1.5 billion to Amtrak, the draft legislation says. U.S. House committees are set to vote on the legislation on Wednesday. President Joe Biden had proposed $20 billion for struggling U.S. transit agencies — and nothing for airlines — while Democrats had pushed for more transit help, citing the collapse in travel demand as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Transit agencies have previously been awarded $39 billion in emergency assistance by Congress. New York’s Metropolitan Transit Agency says daily subway travel has recently been down 70% or more. Read more. 

Also, Democrats are furthering their efforts to expand the child tax credit in an attempt to reduce poverty and provide more assistance to families amid the coronavirus pandemic, The Hill reported. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) introduced his panel’s portion of House Democrats’ broader coronavirus relief package, which is expected to include a one-year expansion of the child tax credit. Additionally, Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) yesterday reintroduced a bill to permanently expand the credit. Both measures would make the credit fully refundable, so that lower-income families can receive the full credit amount. They would increase the annual credit amounts from $2,000 to $3,600 for children under age 6 and $3,000 for older children. The expanded credit amounts would phase out for higher earners, though the thresholds are slightly different in the two proposals. Additionally, the measures call for the IRS to make advance payments of the credits on a monthly basis, so that families could receive payments of $300 per month for children under 6 and $250 per month for older children. Each bill directs the IRS to establish an online portal in which taxpayers can notify the agency about changes that occur during the year pertaining to income, number of children and marital status. Read more.