Senate Lawmakers Back Biden’s Stimulus but Reject Minimum Wage Increase
Democrats agreed to limit direct checks for high earners but rejected several Republican amendments to a budget resolution key to passing the president’s $1.9 trillion rescue plan.
By Luke Broadwater, Hailey Fuchs and Jim Tankersley
At President Biden’s insistence, the maximum amount of direct payments would remain at $1,400.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — Senate lawmakers gave their support to President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package just before sunrise on Friday, clearing a major hurdle for the legislation to proceed without Republican support after an overnight voting session that stretched for about 15 hours.
Vice President Kamala Harris arrived early in the morning to the Senate dais, where she cast her first tiebreaking vote, and the Senate adopted the resolution along party lines, 51-50, at about 5:30 a.m.
In the marathon session — known as a vote-a-rama and for which more than 800 amendments were drafted — Senate Democrats maneuvered through a series of politically tricky amendments that Republicans wanted to attach to a coronavirus relief package as lawmakers pressed forward with a budget plan that includes Mr. Biden’s economic aid proposal.
The resolution will go to the House, where Democrats do not require Republican support to approve it.
Still, the proposal did not pass the Senate without setbacks for some Democrats.
Lawmakers dealt a significant blow to Mr. Biden’s plan by dismissing a major tenet: a measure that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
In an impassioned speech around 5 a.m., Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, called for his colleagues to back the budget resolution “in the strongest possible terms,” even after they rejected the minimum wage proposal for which he has been the Senate’s leading proponent.
“We now come to the end of the debate that has gone on for over 14 hours, and we end this debate in a moment in which our country faces more crises, more pain, more anxiety than any time since the Great Depression,” Mr. Sanders said.
“But we have the opportunity to give hope to the American people and restore faith in our government by telling them that tonight we understand the pain that they are experiencing and we are going to do something very significant about it.”
By a voice vote, senators backed an amendment from Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, to “prohibit the increase of the federal minimum wage during a global pandemic.” It was a signal that the wage increase would be difficult to pass in an evenly split Senate, where at least one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, is on record opposing it.
“A $15 federal minimum wage would be devastating for our hardest-hit small businesses at a time they can least afford it,” Ms. Ernst said on the Senate floor. “We should not have a one-size-fits-all policy set by Washington politicians.”
Mr. Sanders seemed unfazed. He said that his plan was to carry out the wage increase over five years and that he had never wanted to raise it during the pandemic.
“We need to end the crisis of starvation wages in Iowa and around the United States,” Mr. Sanders said. He added that he planned to try to get the phased-in wage increase included in a budget reconciliation bill that would allow Mr. Biden’s stimulus plan to circumvent the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster rule.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during the debate that Democrats would not give up on trying to raise the wage to $15 an hour even outside the stimulus measure.
“It’s not the last bill we’ll pass,” Ms. Pelosi said. “This is the rescue package.”
Entering the early hours of the morning, senators in both parties pushed forward test votes to showcase their dueling priorities. In an evenly split Senate, any amendment required the majority’s support to pass, and therefore several failed on a 50-to-50 tie.
Among the Republican proposals that did not garner enough support were measures to reduce funding to states like New York, which is under investigation over coronavirus deaths in nursing homes; to prohibit funding for schools that do not reopen for in-person classes once teachers are vaccinated; and to block funds from so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that do not cooperate with federal law enforcement.
Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and the chairwoman of the education committee, called the effort to put restrictions on sending aid to schools “simply a political show.”
“If we withhold funds and schools cannot implement health safety protocols, then we are acting counter to actually getting students back in the classroom,” Ms. Murray said.
Democrats did, however, rally around some amendments from Republicans. The Senate, by unanimous vote, agreed to a motion from Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, both Republicans of Florida, to block tax increases on small businesses during the pandemic.
Lawmakers also backed a measure from Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, to establish a fund to provide grants to food and drinking establishments affected by the coronavirus crisis.
And, by a vote of 58 to 42, they agreed to prohibit stimulus money from going to undocumented immigrants — something that is not included in Mr. Biden’s economic rescue plan.
The eight Democrats who voted with Republicans on that last measure included John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Gary Peters of Michigan and Mr. Manchin.
The Senate also approved an amendment to maintain the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Under President Donald J. Trump, the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, breaking with decades of precedent, and opened a new embassy in the city, complicating peace in the Middle East.
Only three lawmakers objected to the amendment on Thursday night: Mr. Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware.
On the Senate floor on Wednesday in the lead-up to Thursday’s votes, Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, dismissed the entire undertaking as a way to “try to set each other up, that we’ll somehow trick someone into taking a bad position that can be turned into a campaign advertisement.”
“Everybody should ignore it if they can. Do anything to not watch vote-a-rama,” Mr. Schatz said. “It is boring and it is the worst part of the United States Senate.”
Among the amendments that passed with bipartisan support — by a vote of 99 to 1 — on Thursday was a measure from Mr. Manchin and Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, to restrict $1,400 direct checks included in Mr. Biden’s plan from going to high earners, though it did not specify what income level was too high. Democrats have largely agreed to limit payouts for Americans with higher incomes.
“Do we want stimulus checks to go to households with family incomes of $300,000?” Ms. Collins said.
Despite the amendments, the process left Mr. Biden’s plan largely intact as Democrats moved forward.
“We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader. “We cannot do too little.”
Before the vote, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, had indicated that the amendments were meant to force Democrats into taking a position on some issues they might wish to avoid.
“We’re going to put senators on the record,” he said. “We’ll see how our colleagues vote on these basic, common-sense steps.”
During the voting, Ms. Collins, who led a group of 10 senators who met with Mr. Biden this week with hopes of persuading him to embrace a smaller, $618 billion stimulus package, released a letter to the White House that argued that Mr. Biden was overestimating the money needed to reopen schools and help state and local governments.
In an interview, she urged the president to take advantage of money already approved in previous stimulus packages.
“There are hundreds of billions of dollars in unspent funds,” Ms. Collins said.
Democrats were expected to introduce legislation and begin committee debate in the House next week, aiming to move the plan through the budget reconciliation process.
While details remain in flux, people familiar with the plan said it would largely mirror Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion proposal. The most significant deviation, they said, was likely to be lowering the cost of providing direct payments to Americans.
At Mr. Biden’s insistence, the maximum amount of those payments would remain at $1,400. But Democrats and the administration are discussing phasing them out for higher-income Americans at a faster rate than the $600 payments that Congress approved in December, meaning that those earning more would get smaller checks.
Democrats could further reduce the cost of the plan by lowering the income threshold at which the payments begin to phase out.
Mr. Biden has proposed beginning the phaseout for individuals earning $75,000 a year and couples earning $150,000 a year.
Lawmakers are discussing reducing those thresholds to $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for couples, though they have not made a final decision on whether to do so.
Among the Republican ideas that appeared to gain some traction with the White House was a proposal from Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who unveiled a plan to send payments of up to $1,250 per month to families with children, in an effort to encourage Americans to have more children while reducing child poverty rates.
Mr. Romney’s Family Security Act would provide $350 a month for each child up to 5 years old and $250 a month for children ages 6 to 17, via the Social Security Administration.
The payments would be capped at $1,250 per family per month, and they would phase out for individual parents earning above $200,000 a year and couples earning more than $400,000.
To offset the costs of the new benefit, Mr. Romney proposed eliminating other government safety net spending, including the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and the expanded “head of household” deduction for parents who do not itemize their income tax returns.
Mr. Biden’s American Rescue Plan includes a one-year expansion of the existing child tax credit and earned-income tax credit, which analysts say could cut child poverty in half. Mr. Romney’s plan would streamline the earned-income tax credit, while adding in the child allowance.
The plan drew praise as an example of the possibilities of bipartisan action, and the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, said in a tweet that it was an “encouraging sign.”
Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.
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