Congress Passes $1.9T COVID-19 Relief Package

Both the House and Senate have now passed President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, 49 days after he took office on Jan. 20. The package passed both houses of Congress with zero Republican support, and the approval from Congress comes as U.S. COVID-19 cases and deaths are on a sharp decline and vaccine rollout occurs at one of the fastest rates in the entire world. The bill now proceeds to Biden’s desk, awaiting his signature in order for the bill to become law.

By a vote of 220 to 211, House Democrats approved the relief package three days after the Senate passed the bill 50-49 using the budget reconciliation process, a process which allows certain budget-related bills to bypass the Senate filibuster. Not a single Republican in any house of Congress voted for the bill, while Rep. Jared Golden of Maine was the only Democrat in any house of Congress to vote against the bill.

The bill passed is Biden’s most significant legislative victory since taking office. Among the provisions in this bill dubbed one of the “most progressive” bills in history, it provides $1,400 stimulus checks to most Americans, gives state and local governments billions in aid, extends federal unemployment benefits, and provides billions of dollars in relief to various sectors of the economy struggling to make it through one of the worst financial crises in history, as well as providing money to help speed up the vaccine rollout.

Republicans argued that the relief package’s $1.9 trillion price tag was too high and unaffordable, although recent polls have indicated huge support from the American public in the passage of the bill. Many polls have indicated at least 60 percent support for the bill, while a Pew Research Center poll showed support at a whopping 70 percent, including 41 percent of Republican voters. The support among Republican voters is significant at a time characterized by hyperpartisan politics in Washington.

Biden, who has called the bill a “historic piece of legislation,” is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday. The passage of the bill is a major victory for Biden, and is likely to be one of the most significant legislations of the Biden presidency.

The partisan vote in Congress highlighted a dramatic shift in the Democratic Party since the Obama era: it had learned not to compromise with the GOP. Back in 2009, the Obama administration spent almost a year negotiating with the GOP to pass the Affordable Care Act, one of the most significant health care reform bills in modern history, to no avail—the ACA passed with zero Republican support. And during the 2009 financial crisis, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats tried everything possible to win Republican support for their relief package, and ended up removing many provisions in the $787 billion package that resulted. That package not only passed with little Republican support, it was far too small to address the financial crisis and ultimately culminated in the GOP winning back the House in the 2010 midterm elections.

This time, a much more unified Democratic Party lobbied behind a massive spending bill, refusing to cut out legislative priorities in the hopes of getting some Republican support. And Joe Biden has made it very clear what his idea of “bipartisanship” means: He will try and work with the GOP as much as possible, but will not sacrifice any Democratic priorities just to win over support from across the aisle, since anything is unlikely to win over massive Republican support anyway.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki touted the bill as “one of the most progressive” bills in history and is unifying for Democrats. And she is right: the Democratic Party is more liberal and populist than it ever has been, and this bill contains far more progressive priorities than many other previous bills.

The modern Democratic Party is further to the left than it ever has been at any point in modern history. Regardless of whether it is social issues of abortion and gun control or economical issues like spending big and enacting major governmental reforms, the Democratic Party today is far more open to spending and much less worried about being cast as big-spending liberals.

And although Sen. Bernie Sanders’s provision to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour was knocked out of the final bill, this bill is packed full of liberal policies. It increases the child tax credit to $3,000 per child, which is could cut U.S. child poverty rates in half and help 13 million children and adults. Although this is temporary, Democrats are likely to make it permanent.

It also makes it substantially cheaper to buy health insurance under the provisions listed in the Affordable Care Act, and it contains a little-advertised $60 billion tax hike for wealthy individuals and big corporations, a major progressive goal aimed at making society more equitable by forcing those well-off to pay more.

Sanders, a progressive Democrat from Vermont who has long called for Congress to enact progressive legislation, called the bill “the most significant piece of legislation to benefit working people in the modern history of this country,” even though a number of provisions championed by liberals, such as raising the jobless benefit to $400 per week instead of keeping it at $300 per week, were removed from the final version of the bill.

Though Republicans have been quick to dismiss the bill as a far-left, “socialist” spending scheme, they have not been able to specifically criticize any parts of the plan since many provisions were included in previous bills that passed while former President Donald Trump was in office, including the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Stimulus Act, also known as the CARES Act, passed back in March 2020 with large bipartisan majorities.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California said, in an attempt to discredit the bill, “This isn’t a rescue bill. It isn’t a relief bill. It’s a laundry list of left-wing priorities that predate the pandemic and do not meet the needs of American families.”

And many Republicans are well aware of the fact that if the economy recovers and booms, Biden could get a lot of credit for it, and Democrats would be able to attribute it to this spending bill, which could make many progressive policies popular. This is similar to how conservative economics picked up steam in the 1980s during the Ronald Reagan administration when his fiscally conservative policies oversaw a period of great economic growth. “The American people are going to see an American comeback this year, but it won’t be because of this liberal bill,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader from Kentucky.

But at least one Republican saw the political benefit for supporting such a massively popular, populist bill. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., praised the bill on Twitter for providing $28.6 billion in “targeted relief” for restaurants, despite him voting no for the bill. He defended his “no” vote by saying that he wouldn’t vote for $1.9 trillion “just because it has a couple of good provisions.” The tweet was negatively received on Twitter, with many people pointing out the fact that he had voted against the bill.

Independent restaurant operators have won $28.6 billion worth of targeted relief.

This funding will ensure small businesses can survive the pandemic by helping to adapt their operations and keep their employees on the payroll.https://t.co/Ob4pRb9Xh4

— Senator Roger Wicker (@SenatorWicker) March 10, 2021

This bill is likely to have far-reaching effects into the future of American policy. If the bill’s provisions are well-received, the economy bounces back, and COVID-19 is brought under control through a well-organized vaccination program oversaw by the Biden administration, it could help avert a red wave in the 2022 midterm elections, and Democrats could run on a platform promising to make the provisions in this bill permanent.