|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
US: The first full week oPresidef nt Joe Biden in the White House is dominated by one question: Will he make good on the promises of unity and continue to push his reluctant Republicans to compromise on the $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, or will his party call it Will you carry on alone?
For Tanya Buma, who runs a nonprofit in Michigan providing mental health services, it is irrelevant whether Washington’s relief has bipartisan support. It would be nice to leave both parties behind, she says – this would indicate widespread sympathy. She appreciates Biden’s call for unity – but she just wants to know that her organization, which is the face of veterans and first responders, Serves spouse and children, will last. The epidemic has caused grants and donations that he usually relies on to dry up. It has terminated the $ 23,000 EIDL loan it received last April, and two of its applications for paycheck protection program (PPP) loans have gone unpunished.
In the first week of December, Buma was supposed to reduce its employees’ work time to 20 hours per payroll. She now waits on a $ 15,000 state-level grant from Michigan. If she falls, she says, “We will not exist.” For them, the package Biden proposed earlier this month, which includes provisions such as $ 15 billion in grants for small businesses, is a lifeline. “To get us up to speed and get rolling back to where we were before COVID, we are 100% reliant on [the law being planned],” says Bouma.
Buama’s stories lay the blame lines for the first trial of Biden’s presidency: tensions between trying to get financially quick relief outside the door and gaining bipartisan support for his first legislative effort. Biden spent his campaign stressing the need for unity. Still, the package that Bouma and millions of other Americans await is met with skepticism by Republicans, who are keeping an eye on the price tag. Democratic leaders in Congress, clearly looking at the writing on the wall, are preparing an option to pursue a relief bill through “reconciliation” in a harmonious way, a mysterious process that leaves them with 51 Senate votes on party lines. To pass legislation, including the vice president. Chairman Kamala Harris. But it would be a blatant abandonment of Biden’s significant promise to govern with both sides, giving Republicans fodder about Washington’s inability to change the tone of polarization.
Traditional wisdom says that if one can reach bipartisan consensus in this intimate era, Biden is a four-decade veteran of the Senate who led congressional talks for eight years as Vice President. Both Biden and his top staff are working on trying phones, Google Meet and Zoom, and deal with brokers. White House press secretary Jane Saki says Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Clann, and senior adviser Anita Doon are talking directly to lawmakers, as does Biden’s legislative affairs director Louisa Terrell and Biden’s close attorney, Steve Rickshetty, Whose new office is just down the narrow corridor. Oval.
But in these negotiations, hashing takes time, which is running out. The Commerce Department released a report on Thursday stating that GDP declined by 3.5 percent in 2020, its lowest since World War II. The impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump is about to consume the Senate. Until action is taken, 14. On March 5, more than 5 million people will lose a weekly allocation of $ 300 in unemployment. As of March 31, small businesses will no longer be able to apply for the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers loans loanable to keep them away. On the same day, tens of thousands of airline employees resurrected themselves when federal funds of $ 15 billion put them on parole wishes.
Experts say these reefs mean mid-February should ideally pass the bill, so recipients don’t see any reduction in benefits, such as last year when Congress took several months to renew programs I waited. Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, says, “I think we have two weeks to pass the incentive and have signed on for new benefits for the states to run and pay smoothly.” ” Volunteered for Biden’s transition team. “Legislators need to realize that they can’t be right, as of March 14, and I think they do. But I’ve worked in the Senate. I know how to draft a package and the general How difficult it is to form an agreement. ”
It isn’t easy to reach such an agreement even when the legalists agree that relief is needed. After passing the $ 2.2 trillion CAR Act last March, Congress could not pass another comprehensive relief package until December. Now, Republicans are resisting pressure to spend more money, arguing that doing so may increase the federal deficit and may not even be necessary.
Complicating matters further is a competition slate of different priorities in the Senate. Only three candidates for Biden’s cabinet have been confirmed, and the Chamber is in the running to officially establish them. And starting on February 9, Senator Trump will become the juror in Trump’s second impeachment trial, with prior indications indicating that it is an all-consuming act. “Nobody knew that there was going to be an uprising in the Capitol [when Biden’s proposal was being drafted during the transition] and this clearly produced a set of outcomes that have re-shaped the environment, “Business advocate and small Rath Buttle, a Beat campaign consultant.
This is why Democrats in Congress are moving forward on two tracks. Hurt by his fruitless efforts to get Republican support for the Affordable Care Act 12 years ago, which took months and delayed the bill to pass, Democratic offices in both chambers are preparing budget resolutions that will be out next weekend The foundation of an alternative route to finance Biden’s COVID-19 relief proposal. Once the budget proposal is passed, the door is open to go to “reconciliation,” by which Republicans cut Trump’s tax, and Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act. If Republicans are not showing severe desire to negotiate Biden’s relief terms by next weekend, Democrats have the option to start down that road.
“Our priority is to make this important work bipartisan, which involves an effort to incorporate our Republican allies or amendments of input and ideas. But suppose our Republican colleagues decide to oppose this urgent and necessary law. In that case, we must do without them Gotta move forward, ”Senate Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday.
Reconciliation is not the administration’s priority. But Biden and his colleagues are well aware of the impending deadline. Brian Desse, head of the National Economic Council, has been briefing senators and MPs on both sides throughout the week. Biden himself has been making phone calls with the senators. He has so far stopped jumping into extensive negotiations and has not called a group together in the White House, a move Psaki said would be “good television,” but could not yield results.
So far, nothing has come out of these efforts, and patience with Republicans is slim, a man outside the White House told lawmakers. None of the ten Republican senators required in the White House would be required to pass the resolution that they are on the board.
Biden’s advisors are still publicly expressing satisfaction with the state of the game. “The president feels that it should work. He proposed his package. He is getting a response. We are having a conversation. We hope the final bill will not be exactly the same as he saw the proposed first bill.” ‘
But they also know that they cannot wait forever, especially with these emerging deadlines. In a public comment that same day, Biden predicted that the negotiation process would end “in a couple of weeks,” noting that “time is of the essence.” Biden will be meeting with his newly installed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday to discuss the impact of aid delays on those businesses, workers and families. Some Biden colleagues think he will wait longer than the time period he had forecast. “When he was Biden’s vice president, he was not giving up the opportunity to help the American people,” says Biden senior adviser Mo Vella. “If he did that, I think a lot of us would disappoint him.”
His allies are also asserting against the Republican’s line of inevitable attack that if Democrats grant unilateral relief, Biden is not serious about working all the way. “The first piece of legislation will not judge the general success of unity,” says John Anglon, surveyor of Biden’s campaign. “It just can’t happen when you’re not in trouble. ”
No matter the result, for many businesses, any additional relief is coming too late. Before the epidemic, Vinh Nguyen, 55, was the owner of two Vietnamese restaurants in Northern Virginia known locally for its carefully crafted Fu soup broth. Born in Saigon to a family that fought against the Communist takeover, Nguyen immigrated to the US as a refugee and worked dozens in 10 states before building a restaurant business. They say a restaurant was already closed in October, following the sale of the epidemic. Now, his other restaurant, Saigon Landlord for 1975, wants him to hand over the keys on January 31, months after not being able to make rent.
The economic downturn already cost Nguyen his home. His wife and their four children between the ages of 16 and 20 moved into a nearby townhouse that they rented from a friend. He applied for PPP assistance at three banks, but no bank would extend the aid. “It’s too late,” Nguyen says. At this point, he says, he has to start, as he did when he fled to Vietnam and came to American. “My life started from zero, from below,” Nuyyan says. “Now I go back to zero,” he says. “But I never gave up. I keep fighting “