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President Biden indicated in a call with House Democrats that he was open to sending $1,400 payments to a smaller group of Americans in the next round of coronavirus relief legislation and changing the overall price tag of his $1.9 trillion plan, the Wall Street Journal reported. Biden told House Democrats yesterday that he wouldn’t change the amount of the proposed $1,400 payments, saying people had been promised that amount. Instead, he said he would consider targeting them differently than the previous two rounds of direct aid to Americans. Members of both political parties have questioned whether the $1,400 payments he has proposed would go to people who don’t need the aid. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said later yesterday that Biden is open to changes in the threshold for who would qualify for the $1,400 stimulus checks. “That’s something that has been under discussion,” she said. Biden also said he was flexible on the overall cost of the package, which Democrats have started advancing through Congress through a process that will allow them to pass it along party lines, according to the people familiar with the call. He said Democrats could make “compromises” on several programs in the proposal. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

In related news, House Democrats voted yesterday to set the stage for party-line approval of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, heeding the president’s calls for swift action on his first big agenda item, the Washington Post reported. The 218-to-212 nearly party-line vote approved a budget bill that would unlock special rules in the Senate allowing Biden’s relief package to pass with a simple majority, instead of the 60 votes usually needed. The Senate is expected to take action on the same legislation later in the week. With the budget resolutions in place, Democrats would be able to get to work in earnest on writing Biden’s proposed relief bill into law — and ultimately pass it without any Republican votes if necessary, though they continued to insist that is not their preference. Read more. 

President Biden urged Senate Democrats in a call yesterday to “go big” and move quickly on a COVID-19 relief bill, signaling that he is rejecting a $618 billion proposal sponsored by 10 GOP senators as “too small” even though he is open to some of their ideas, The Hill reported. “It was clear,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) after the call. “Go big and be prompt because the American public is really hurting and really needs this.” Biden told Democrats that his clear preference is for Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion package, despite concerns voiced by Republicans about the impact on the deficit. Kaine said Biden didn’t close any doors to working with Republicans but he wants Democrats to move a large package immediately, which means it’s almost certain to need to move under a special process known as budget reconciliation to be able to pass with a simple majority vote. Read more.

In related news, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa) on Tuesday introduced a bill aimed at providing tax relief to people who received unemployment benefits last year amid the coronavirus pandemic, The Hill reported. The legislation would exempt from federal income taxes the first $10,200 in unemployment benefits that taxpayers received last year. Both people who received unemployment benefits through federal programs and people who received benefits through state programs would be eligible for the tax relief, according to a news release from the lawmakers. Read more.

Greylock Capital Management says it’s really nothing more than a small business that should be allowed to use special bankruptcy rules to quickly cancel a lease on its expensive, midtown Manhattan office space, Bloomberg News reported. At a court hearing yesterday, attorney Jeffrey Chubak argued that the company qualifies as a subchapter V debtor because only its affiliates owe hundreds of millions of dollars, not Greylock Capital Associates, the entity that filed for bankruptcy Jan. 31. Once Greylock finishes deconsolidating its balance sheet, Associates will be under the maximum debt limit of about $7 million, Chubak told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain. “Obviously I don’t want this case to proceed in subchapter V if you’re over the debt limit,” Judge Drain said. Assuming Greylock can show the debt is low enough, Judge Drain said that he would be open to quickly considering cancellation of the office lease since the company has already moved out. After that contract is gone, Greylock will be able to file a reorganization plan that pays all creditors in full, Chubak said. Greylock, founded in 2004, is one of the best known hedge funds in emerging markets investing; within two months its assets under management will be around $350 million, down from about $1.1 billion at the end of 2017, according to court papers.

A group of Senate Republicans outlined their roughly $618 billion coronavirus-relief offer Monday, including a round of $1,000 direct checks for many adults, as Democrats began a process that would allow them to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan along party lines, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 10 Republican senators met with Biden yesterday to discuss their proposal, which would provide $300 a week in enhanced federal unemployment benefits through June, versus the $400 a week through September in the Biden plan. The GOP proposal also outlines $20 billion each for child care and schools — both lower than the Biden proposal — as well as $50 billion for small-business relief and $160 billion for vaccines, testing and protective equipment, according to a summary released yesterday. The proposal omits measures favored by many Democrats, such as aid for state and local governments and a plan to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. The meeting lasted roughly two hours, and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that the two sides explained their proposals further and agreed to keep talking. Nine senators joined in person, with Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) attending remotely.

President Biden and his top economic aides brushed aside criticism from Republicans on Friday about the administration’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package and vowed to forge ahead with the proposal, saying the bill was critical for a flagging economic recovery and overwhelmingly popular with voters, the New York Times reported. The comments came as Biden was briefed by aides on the need for more fiscal help and the state of the economy, and as new analysis from the Brookings Institution suggested the Biden proposal, if enacted, would vault the economy above its prepandemic path by the second half of this year. A team of top economic officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, met with Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the Oval Office on Friday to underscore the challenges facing an economy that recorded decelerating growth at the end of last year. They were joined by Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, and Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey of the Council of Economic Advisers. “The price of doing nothing is much higher than the price of doing something and doing something big,” Yellen said before the briefing. “We need to act now. The benefits of acting now and acting big will far outweigh the costs in the long run.”

The Small Business Administration’s third round of Paycheck Protection Program coronavirus relief lending has steadily grown to top 400,000 loans worth about $35 billion in its first two weeks as a persistent economic crisis means small businesses are still seeking help, the Washington Post reported. The government’s new phased approach to distributing the $284 billion in recently allocated PPP funds means it’s unlikely that the money will run out as it did in April. This time, the SBA gave a head start to smaller banks and those likely to serve low-income and minority communities. And it added a new set of automated compliance checks to prevent fraud and abuse of public funds, something that has created new safeguards but also led more applications to be rejected. Acting SBA administrator Tami Perriello said the agency wants to move faster while also carrying out necessary checks. When implementing the third round of funding, Congress put new limits on who could receive PPP loans, even as it approved hundreds of billions of dollars of new funding for the program. The first week of loan funding starting Jan. 11 was open only to “Community Financial Institutions,” which are typically better at lending to businesses in low-income areas. It was not until Jan. 19 that larger banks were allowed to participate. The rollout has not been without hiccups. In a letter Monday, the American Bankers Association pointed out several apparent glitches that the organization said “are preventing the program from fully supporting small businesses in need.”

President Joe Biden said he’s open to negotiate on his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief proposal, and is hopeful to bring Republicans behind it, though didn’t rule out pursuing a Democrat-only route, Bloomberg News reported. “I’m open to negotiate,” Biden said at a news conference on Monday. Still, he said “time is of the essence and I must tell you I’m reluctant to cherry pick and take out one or two items here.” Biden said that it would be up to lawmakers as to whether to use a budget-rule procedure in the Senate to forgo Republicans and proceed just with Democratic support. He also said that it won’t be clear if there’s a basis for agreement until the final stage of talks, which he anticipated in a “couple” of weeks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said yesterday that he aims to secure passage of the next round of COVID-19 relief by mid-March, just when jobless benefits from the last package will be running out. “We’ll try to get that passed in the next month, month and a half,” Schumer said with regard to pandemic aid on Monday, speaking on a call with New York City mass-transit advocates. A bipartisan group of senators, along with the Republican and Democratic leaders of a moderate group of House representatives, on Sunday questioned the White House on the basis for Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal. Brian Deese, head of Biden’s National Economic Council, was pressed on the justification for the price tag of the plan, which would be the second-largest emergency spending package on record. GOP Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she’d suggest to the bipartisan group that it look at pulling together its own, more targeted, proposal.

President Joe Biden will escalate appeals for Congress to back his top priority, $1.9 trillion in pandemic relief, seeking to overcome Republican opposition to the plan as he enters his first full week in office, Bloomberg News reported. Biden’s top economic adviser, Brian Deese, spent more than an hour on Sunday discussing the proposal with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Some asked the White House to further justify what would be the second-largest emergency spending measure in U.S. history and expressed interest in a much narrower bill focused on accelerating coronavirus vaccine distribution, according to Senator Angus King of Maine and people familiar with the matter. Deese and other officials provided details and context in response to the senators’ questions, according to an administration official. Senior White House aides plan to keep talking with lawmakers in both parties this week to hear their concerns but also press for urgent action, the official said. As the president’s team began its work with key lawmakers, Biden is moving forward with another round of executive actions, following on a series of orders signed soon after he took office. On Monday, he will sign an order directing federal agencies to buy more American-made products and is expected to take other actions on criminal justice, climate, health care and immigration. The new orders will add to roughly two dozen actions Biden has signed since Inauguration Day in an effort to address the coronavirus pandemic, reverse former President Donald Trump’s agenda and point the nation in a new direction.