Third stimulus bill: The American Rescue Plan is signed into law

Now that the American Rescue Plan (ARP) is officially law, more help is on the way for small businesses, including additional money for efforts like the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and a whole new grant offering specifically for restaurants.

In total, the ARP — which Congress passed two weeks ago — has about $50 billion dedicated to bolstering grants and loans for small businesses still navigating the economic fallout of the pandemic. According to a Yelp study, as of August 31, 2020, nearly 100,000 establishments had permanently closed since last March, and another 65,000 had done so temporarily.

President Joe Biden is hitting the road to promote something that’s already very popular: money from the government and more Covid-19 vaccines.

After Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, the American Rescue Plan, was passed and signed into law, the president and Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden, and second gentleman Doug Emhoff have fanned out around the country to promote the package. Battleground states have featured heavily on the schedule; Biden traveled to Pennsylvania and will visit Ohio on Tuesday. Harris has traveled to Nevada and Florida, and the president and vice president went together to Georgia — where Biden initially promised to deliver $2,000 stimulus checks.

Every American citizen who earned less than $75,000 — or $150,000 total for married couples — in 2019 or 2020 has been eligible for the three rounds of pandemic stimulus: the $1,200 check last spring, the $600 check in December, and the $1,400 checks that are on their way right now.

That’s a significant chunk of money, enough to be life-changing for people saving up for a security deposit for an apartment, finally getting needed medical care, paying for the transition into a better job, or dealing with unexpected life events. In the latest stimulus bill, there’s even more money for anyone eligible for unemployment and anyone with dependent children.

Two recent tweets from members of Congress illustrate how, in the wake of President Joe Biden signing the Covid-19 relief bill, Republicans are trying to “have their cake and vote against it, too,” as Barack Obama once put it.

That $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which Biden signed into law last Thursday, didn’t receive a single Republican vote, even though recent polling shows a majority of Republican voters have said they somewhat or completely support it. The popularity of the legislation puts Republican members of Congress in a bind: How does one message against a bill that most Americans like, and that will cut child poverty in half, while also juicing an economy that’s been ravaged by the year-long pandemic?

On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan — a $1.9 trillion stimulus package — into law.

That means a third round of direct cash payments will soon be on the way, but there are a few differences from the stimulus bill Congress passed in December.

Joe Biden has signed the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package after weeks of back-and-forth debate in Congress, and one year to the day after the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan, which Biden first unveiled in January, will deliver aid to millions of Americans and inject funds across the economy as the country continues to steer its way out of the pandemic.

Fifty-seven years ago, a Democratic president who had a reputation as a moderate — and who had been a senator and vice president before reaching the highest office in the land — announced his administration would be waging “unconditional war on poverty in America.”

The legislation that grew out of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration had no marquee program. Instead, the war on poverty was a collection of new initiatives that have stood the test of time: Medicare; Medicaid; food stamps (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program); aid for women, infants, and children (WIC); school breakfasts; Pell Grants; Head Start; and Section 8 housing vouchers, to name a few. It was a landmark passel of legislation that reshaped American life in the decades that followed.

Tucked into the $1.9 trillion stimulus package is a provision that makes forgiven student debt tax-free. It ups the pressure for President Joe Biden to cancel student debt, but it is also a big deal for many borrowers regardless.

The provision, added to the Covid-19 relief bill by Senate Democrats and championed by Sens. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), says that anyone whose student loans are discharged through 2025 won’t face tax consequences. Debt cancellation is usually treated as taxable income, so without this, if someone were to have some or all of their student debt forgiven, it would be accompanied by a tax bill.

Democrats passed an unapologetically progressive stimulus bill through the Senate this weekend, one that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called “the most significant piece of legislation to benefit working families in the modern history of this country.”

This bill would not be on the brink of becoming law if Democrats did not have a governing trifecta in the White House, the Senate, and the House. And that trifecta in turn would not have been possible were it not for the defection into the Democratic column of a particular, and perhaps surprising, demographic: suburban whites with college degrees.

The Senate on Saturday passed what will be the first big bill of President Joe Biden’s term: a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package. The bill now goes to the House, which is likely to okay it and send it to Biden’s desk.

The first thing that’s notable about the bill is how absolutely massive it is. At $1.9 trillion, the cost comes in at roughly double the stimulus package that President Barack Obama signed into law during the Great Recession in 2009. And that’s after Congress separately approved $2.2 trillion and $900 billion relief bills last year. This all adds up to a huge, unprecedented undertaking to shore up the economy.

President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package is on the brink of becoming law. While it may not have been everything many Democrats hoped and dreamed of, the bill is a pretty big deal.

After days of wrangling over last-minute changes to the bill text, the United States Senate passed the relief bill midday Saturday. The vote was 50-49 along party lines. The bill includes $1,400 stimulus checks to millions of Americans, extends expanded unemployment until September 6, and doles out billions of dollars toward vaccinations, testing, state and local governments, schools, and businesses.

The Senate — following a grueling vote-a-rama on Friday and Saturday — has finally approved a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill, bringing it one step closer to becoming law.

The legislation, which passed 50-49 on a purely party-line vote, with Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) not voting due to a family funeral, now heads back to the House, where a vote is expected as early as Tuesday. This step is significant and follows intense back-and-forth in the upper chamber over multiple provisions, including some — like the $15 minimum wage — that were stripped out for procedural reasons, and others, like unemployment insurance, that have been changed in response to pressure from moderate Democrats.

Early on Saturday morning, the Senate approved a modified Democratic unemployment insurance plan by a narrow, party-line vote, paring back benefits included in a still-in-the-works Covid-19 relief package that are aimed at helping the millions of Americans currently out of a job.

Under the new plan, expanded federal unemployment benefits, which supplement state unemployment payments and are set to expire in mid-March — would be renewed at $300 per week through the first week of September. The first $10,200 of benefits will also be non-taxable for households under a $150,000 income threshold.

The Senate’s latest “vote-a-rama” — the marathon session during which legislators consider amendments for a bill — has already revealed just how much Democrats are still fractured over the $15 minimum wage, and it’s just getting started.

Throughout Friday and likely early Saturday, senators will be considering potential changes to the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill in a slew of back-to-back votes. And in a procedural vote to waive objections to an amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), which would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 over the course of five years, eight of the chamber’s 50 Democrats voted against proceeding.

As part of their Covid-19 stimulus bill, Democrats are trying to cut a deal with Republican-led states to plug one of the biggest holes in Obamacare: the so-called Medicaid expansion gap.

But conservative state officials don’t sound interested in taking it. Based on an informal survey of the states yet to expand Medicaid, the provision in the stimulus bill that provides increased funding for states that expand the program now may end up having no effect at all. That would mean millions of people in poverty remaining uninsured.

Senate Republicans — beginning with a reading of the entirety of the stimulus package on Thursday — have been trying to drag out the legislative process on the bill as much as possible in an effort to make things uncomfortable for Democrats.

That also means, however, that they’re delaying the legislation’s passage in the middle of a public health crisis, as millions of people and thousands of businesses wait on congressional aid.

This week, the Covid-19 relief bill heads to the Senate, where it’s poised to face significant opposition from Republican members who think the measure is too big and wasteful. Democrats, meanwhile, have emphasized how much people are still struggling given the fallout from Covid-19, and note that this bill is commensurate with that need.

Because of this disagreement, it’s very possible that the relief legislation ends up advancing solely with Democratic support. And according to a new poll from Vox and Data for Progress, most voters — including nearly half of Republicans — believe lawmakers need to pass the $1.9 trillion bill as quickly as they can.

The Senate parliamentarian on Thursday dealt Democrats a disappointing blow in the fight for the $15 minimum wage, ruling that it can’t be included in a Covid-19 relief package if lawmakers want to use budget reconciliation.

That decision likely means that the $15 minimum wage is effectively dead — for now. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has said repeatedly, 10 Republican senators are not going to sign on to this type of increase, meaning lawmakers won’t be able to get the 60 votes it needs to pass through regular order.

With President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 relief package headed to the Senate, it looks like Democrats will finally get their long-held desire for hundreds of billions in unrestricted state and local government aid.

So, naturally, a debate has broken out over whether they might be getting too much of a good thing — or even giving Republicans a political gift.

Democrats have overcome an important hurdle in Covid-19 relief: The House of Representatives passed its version of the $1.9 trillion stimulus package, sending it off to the Senate.

The bill passed around 2 am Saturday, in a 219-212 vote, with every Republican voting no. Democratic Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Kurt Schrader of Oregon also opposed the bill.

From his first day in office, President Joe Biden has been under tremendous pressure to swiftly address three immediate crises: the pandemic, unemployment, and climate change.

If all goes according to his plans, Congress will pass a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 rescue bill as early as next week, helping to stem the first two crises. Next, Biden hopes to further tackle unemployment along with climate change through Build Back Better, a $2 trillion infrastructure plan he outlined last summer after Covid-19 hit. On Wednesday, the Senate kicked off the process of turning that vision into a bill.

Suppose you’re a single parent raising two kids, ages 3 and 5. You were furloughed in the spring, when the big-box store you worked at downsized. You started getting hours again in the summer, enduring substantial risk by going to work with customers who didn’t always wear masks. Child care was a mess, and you had to scrape together help from family and friends.

It was a rough year — but you stayed afloat. In total, you ended up working about 1,000 hours last year at $14 an hour, or $14,000 total — plus there were the two stimulus checks the government sent out in April and December.

Maybe early in the pandemic, you first postponed your 2020 vacation to July, and then from July to March. Now, you know you should just wait and see, but you can’t help yourself and went ahead and booked for August.

That’s basically what Congress has been doing with economic aid such as unemployment insurance during the Covid-19 outbreak. Federal lawmakers have been picking arbitrary end dates for much-needed support, more or less guessing at the end of the pandemic for nearly a year. And it appears that in the latest relief package, set to pass Congress in the coming weeks, they’re about to make the same mistake again: Instead of phasing out benefits when the economy gets better, Congress is setting up yet another cliff later this year.

Once congressional Democrats pass a large Covid-19 relief bill, using the budget reconciliation process to avoid a Republican filibuster, the big question is how much further President Biden’s legislative agenda will go.

The progressive wing of the party has a long and varied list of things they want to get done with their newfound congressional majorities — tackling areas ranging from climate change to immigration to health care to voting rights to even adding states, among many others. Scrapping or otherwise reforming the Senate filibuster would likely be necessary to get many of these done. And some argue that if Democrats want to keep their narrow congressional majorities in 2022, they need to get as much of this done as possible.

President Joe Biden appears ready to do what it takes to get the American economy back to full capacity — and then some.

Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package to help steer the economy through the pandemic, and he’s planning to propose a second spending package — one with an even heftier price tag — that invests heavily in infrastructure, climate, and caregiving. His administration is focusing on those most in need, and is even willing to run the economy a little hot for a while to get the gears churning.