Uphill: Republicans Pitch Pared-Back Aid Plan

Plus: Democrats grapple with how to view GOP colleagues after Capitol attack.

By
42

Good morning. 

The Senate is expected to hold a confirmation vote today on Alejandro Mayorkas’s nomination to be secretary of homeland security. The Senate is also set to vote on Pete Buttigieg’s nomination to be transportation secretary. 

Senate GOP Aid Plan 

A group of 10 Republican senators met with President Joe Biden last night to pitch their coronavirus relief proposal. The senators are calling for a $618 billion aid package in response to Biden’s nearly $2 trillion plan. 

“It was a very good exchange of views,” Maine Sen. Susan Collins told reporters afterward. “I wouldn’t say we came together on a package tonight. No one expected that in a two-hour meeting, but what we agreed to do is to follow up and talk further at the staff level and amongst ourselves and with the president and vice president on how we can continue to work together on this very important issue.”

Keep reading with a free account
Create a free Dispatch account to keep reading Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
42
By
Comments (42)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. MikeS

    Am I the only one who sees some room for compromise here?

    Agreement on vaccination and testing. OK done.

    Use Dem's numbers for school reopening.

    Use R's numbers for stimulus checks - except ! - give $1400 to people with incomes lower than $25k.

    $250 B for state and local government aid. C'mon it goes to jurisdictions regardless of color, and you can't say that government funding hasn't taken a COVID hit. As an industry, it's bigger than airlines (for good reason) and they got a big bailout.

    Extend $325 unemployment through September.

    Yeah forget the minimum wage thing. And any other non-budget wishlist items the Dems want.

    I don't have a spreadsheet. That will clearly move the needle closer to $1.9 B. But does anyone really know how much is too much?



    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Pat Riot

      I really don't get the Republican pushback against state aid. Localities are being hammered by reduced tax revenues from retails going down the drain. This his schools, fire fighters, police, and the like.

      I think the issue with making the 1400 based on income is that it complicates the rollout of the program. There's no time to be writing code in IRS systems right now. And ask any accountant in the USA what "your yearly income" even is and they will tell you the answer will cost $1000 minimum.

      And the thing about the top 10%... there's only 10% of them. On the face of it, it's absurd that Jeff Bezos is going to get a check for $1400, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

      Agree about the minimum wage. I rather assumed they put that in there to give Republicans a win in exchange for coming on board and doing this in a bipartisan way. The Democrats should have that debate separately.

      Collapse
    2. Avatar photo
      cheerio

      I'd give the $1400 to anyone with incomes $45K or below per annum.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        cheerio

        800K people filed for unemployment last week.

        Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    Matmos

    It seems to me that he biggest threat this country faces is the disinformed wing of the Republican party. I really wish that Democrats would govern as if they believe this, rather than focusing on Democratic priorities. It seems to me that if you really believe that allowing QAnon and “the election was stolen, let’s have 1776 again” to take over one of the two institutional parties running this country is a bad idea, then what you would do is as much as possible to strengthen the sane wing of the party vs. them - like by very obviously including them in the covid package and showing their perspectives will get traction, while the crazy folks don’t get anywhere. Unfortunately that’s not how party politics work, because the goal there is to make sure “our team” wins. Wish folks could take a page out of Cheney et al’s book and realize sometimes the good of the country really has to outweigh what’s good for the team.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Pat Riot

      What exactly should they do differently than they are already doing?

      Collapse
  3. Mark Holmlund

    Where does President Manchin stand in all this?

    Collapse
  4. Avatar photo
    Pat Riot

    It wouldn't surprise me if Biden is executing on a plan developed weeks ago to eliminate the filibuster.

    The way you would do that would be to:

    1. Make unity a key point of your presidency.

    2. Make lots of gestures in that regard e.g. inviting moderate R Senators over to the White House.

    3. Demonstrate that the Republicans are not interested in working together.

    4. Kill the filibuster, because they had no choice (or in this case, just use budget reconciliation).

    So far the Republicans are walking right into the trap:

    1. They have signaled they won't even *think* about convicting Trump in the Senate, essentially already voting to exonerate him before the trial has even begun.

    2. They have aligned themselves with batshit insane conspiracy theories.

    3. They are meeting with the disgraced former president, signaling there will be no "moving on" past the divisive Trump era.

    4. Their reaction to House member's testimony about the harrowing experience lawmakers suffered on 1/6 is *gleefulness* (it's "owning the libs" level 1000 apparently).

    5. They provided a counter-offer to the Democratic bill that doesn't "meet halfway" but is rather a ridiculous waste of time.

    So the net-net here PR-wise is that the Democrats extended the olive branch, and the Republicans peed on it and laughed at them.

    This is the perfect setup to kill the filibuster and start governing like they have the majority. A strong majority of American people will back them, I reckon.

    Collapse
  5. Avatar photo
    Robert Knudson

    I think back to my brief time as an intern removing duplicates/dead people from the Congressman's mailing list and try to imagine the intern who may have worked on that spreadsheet. What a different world...

    Collapse
  6. Joe1776

    "Good Reads
    What Parler Saw During the Attack on the Capitol"

    Interesting that they are specifically interested in Parler and not all the other formats that captured the moment. They say they looked at 2500 videos of the rally and thought only 500 had anything newsworthy. Many of those seem not to have much that is newsworthy. But if you want to capture what happened why single out parler?

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Mudskipper

      Because you don't have unlimited resources and you think that Parler is the richest and easiest vein to mine?

      Collapse
      1. Joe1776

        All that may be true but doesn't justify exclusively using Parler videos.

        Collapse
  7. Avatar photo
    Frank Vergden

    Hey Haley, the staffer who shared the spreadsheet with you may want to know that Iowa Rep. Randy Feenstra is listed twice. That could mess up the numbers if they want to use that.

    Collapse
  8. Avatar photo
    Dave Conant - MO

    Does it not make tactical and possibly strategic sense for both parties and the President to approach the idea of compromise on Covid relief with an open mind? Since at least 40% of Americans espouse no party affiliation and a percentage of each partisan group is not on the extreme end of the spectrum, giving a bit on specific points to achieve what everyone will perceive as a win sounds like a good idea. Absent the bias of each party’s doctrinaire dogmatists, progress in some direction accrues to a larger benefit than the current “all or nothing” approach that both are taking. Separating out the minimum wage discussion is an immediate win that will enable a major piece of economic policy to get the wide range of discussion that it deserves without any baggage. Supporting schools, vaccine production and distribution and benefits for the involuntarily unemployed is a similarly easy win as all of those find significant support across the political spectrum. One reason for doubt about the value of a broadly distributed benefit check is that many people, while appreciating the return of money they’ve paid in taxes, will admit that they don’t really “need” it. A more closely targeted check for $1000 now to people who are unemployed as of Jan. 1 and/or making $40,000 or less based on 2020 IRS figures, followed by a second check in the same amount on April 1 for anyone still suffering, with both benefits zeroing out at $60,000, would save some money for anyone posturing as a fiscal conservative and sounds much more as though the government is using the vast amount of data they have on each of us to some benefit. It has become a way of life in Congress to pass massive omnibus bills ostensibly because they’ll get general support by including a “must have” for everyone but in reality, as we’ve seen with budget bills for many years and with, most recently, the second Covid relief bill, they actually give everyone something to object to, delay the process and produce no meaningful change. Far better to submit like issues as one bill and leave the next set of concerns for the next piece of legislation. Ideological purity is great for philosophers, editorialists and political magazines but serves extraordinarily little practical purpose; pragmatic engagement more often yields progress toward a mutually agreed upon goal that reflects the needs and desires of the greater number of people.

    Collapse
  9. Joe1776

    What happens for small business owners that are shut down and have rent bills piling up? I know they can get ppp loans that cover about 3 months of payroll. But many have been shut down and/or had more limited capacity for much longer than three months. And that is only the payroll expenses not the rent utilities or other losses the shut downs caused.

    Can the unemployment payments at least be capped out at 80-100% of what the person was making when they were employed? Why does that seem so controversial. In order to calculate unemployment most states need to have an calculation of what the person made before anyway.

    Obviously Dems are acting in bad faith when they try to double minimum wage in a COVID package.

    Collapse
    1. Daniel Rabiner

      This is what happens when Republicans negotiate in bad faith. If they were to give their votes for the package I can't imagine Democrats not negotiating that down to something like $10 and pegging it to inflation in the future. Same with the unemployment benefits. You're in the minority, negotiate to make the bill better, not to get everything you want. The last thing Democrats want is a package passed only by Democrats (if they can avoid it) but they aren't going to make the same mistake as 2009 when they passed a stimulus bill that was too small for the problem at hand in an attempt to get Republican support.

      Collapse
      1. Joe1776

        What does minimum wage have to do with covid? Making jobs more scarce and it harder for small businesses to find workers hardly seems like a good way to help our economy out of a pandemic that caused massive unemployment.

        And are you saying the republicans are against capping unemployment at your pre employment wage? I am just asking why would *anyone* democrat or republican not agree people shouldn't make more money on unemployment than they make from working. Is that really a partisan issue?

        Collapse
        1. Mary Stine

          Minimum wage hikes might actually make it easier for many people to find better employees. Another advantage is that those people have more money to spend, especially locally and on USA made products and services. Those are the most important business areas to stimulate right now and there are far more modest income earners to support that.
          Why should anyone get more money from unemployment than they earn working?
          That would only make sense if the recipient was paying high fees for late payments on utilities and rent, or racked up high interest on credit cards to pay steep medical bills out of pocket for Covid. Those are legitimate, but would have to be proven with good records and the payments should have a sunset law.
          My concern as a former small business owner is that only providing the bare minimum during a pandemic only encourages people to hoard money and other goods, while simultaneously discouraging spending even on necessities like prescription medication, preventive health care, better nutrition, car and home maintenance, to name a few.

          Collapse
          1. Joe1776

            So you agree the amount of unemployment should be capped? I never met anyone that said it shouldn't. So why isn't it capped? Why would anyone go back to work if that means they are going to get a pay cut?

            I think we can agree to disagree on whether doubling minimum wage helps employers find better employees and how that will effect the economy generally.


            Collapse
  10. Mike Darnell

    Would not “concern” or “anxiety” be more apt. Has their flight or fright response been triggered.

    Collapse
Load More