Crooked Media - What A Day: Budget crunch

Democrats have set the stage to pass President Biden’s coronavirus relief package without waiting around for Republicans to not vote for it anyway, in a very exciting illustration of what can happen when Democrats a) win elections and b) decide to act like it. 
 

• The House has approved the budget roadmap that will allow Congress to pass Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package through the reconciliation process—that is, without the need for bipartisan support. The Senate passed the same measure early on Friday morning by a 51-50 vote margin, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. The budget plan directs committees to start turning the stimulus proposal into actual legislation, which needs to be passed by mid-March at the very latest, when millions of Americans would otherwise start losing their federal unemployment benefits.
   
• The outline approved by both chambers still mostly looks like Biden’s original proposal, with a couple of potential changes. After Biden suggested he was open to further targeting the $1,400 stimulus checks (which were already limited to individuals making under $75,000 a year), the latest Democratic plan under discussion would only send checks to Americans who made under $50,000 in either 2019 or 2020 (still TBD). It would be extra insane to deny anyone a check based on their 2019 income as if a full year of pandemic chaos hadn’t swept through in between, but either way, $50,000 a year isn’t exactly Scrooge McDuck territory. That plan could change, and there’s still time to tell your reps if you think they should worry more about getting help to people in need than the specter of The Wrong People getting a little extra cash to put back into the economy. (202) 224-3121.
   
• The Senate also agreed to a GOP proposal to bar any increase of the federal minimum wage during the pandemic, though Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders has always proposed to raise the wage to $15 incrementally, and Sanders said that he would still push to get that increase included in the final reconciliation bill. Republican opposition aside, Senate Democrats will need to be in lockstep to get the bill passed, and at least one—America’s Sweetheart Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)—has already said he won’t support a $15 minimum wage. Biden also said on Friday that he doesn't think the measure will make it into the aid package because of the Senate's reconciliation rules, but that he remains committed to negotiating a wage increase separately.

The biggest takeaway from Friday’s votes is that Joe Biden and congressional Democrats don’t plan to waste any time on further negotiations.
 

• The Labor Department’s new jobs report showed that the U.S. economy added just 49,000 jobs in January, reflecting a “weak-ass rate of growth” (in economics terms) that Biden highlighted in laying out his argument to pass a big relief package quickly, without Republican support: “Are we going to say to millions of Americans who are out of work—many out of work for six months or longer, who have been scared by this economic and public health crisis—‘Don’t worry, hang on, things are going to get better?' That’s the Republican answer right now. I can’t in good conscience do that. Too many people in the nation have already suffered for too long.”
   
• The White House Officials of Christmas Past have Biden’s back on this one. More than 200 members of the Obama administration (including a few of your friends from Crooked Media) signed an open letter urging Congress to learn from their mistakes and pass a big stimulus bill, bad-faith Republican criticism be damned: “The resistance we faced from deficit fearmongers seeking to water [the 2009 stimulus] down ate up valuable time and diluted the amount of aid that reached struggling families and small businesses. We know from history that they are wrong and sabotaging the ability of our nation to fully and equitably recover.” We also know from history that those same Republicans don’t give a shit about the deficit when they’re in power, so not only are they wrong, they’re pretending. In conclusion, make the money printer go brrrr.
   

Friday developments brought a major relief package one step closer to reality, and also drew an important boundary around Joe Biden’s pursuit of bipartisanship cooperation: It can’t come at the expense of the need in the country. As White House press secretary Jen Psaki said perfectly today, “He didn't run on a promise to unite the Democratic and Republican parties into one party.” (You listening, Jysten Smanchin?)

A new episode of Rubicon is out now! This week Brian Beutler talks to climate-science writer Emily Atkin about the predictable first steps President Biden has taken to fight climate change, and the exciting but under-the-radar ways that Biden has woven climate science into offices throughout his administration. New episodes are out every Friday, make sure to subscribe to Rubicon wherever you get your pods →  

Early efforts to reduce jail populations during the pandemic have been reversed in a number of major cities. In some cities, including New York City, Chicago, Houston, and Miami, jail populations that declined briefly in early 2020 have returned to pre-pandemic levels. Many cities initially released thousands of people who were detained pretrial, but that didn’t amount to any kind of meaningful, long-term shift, and as officials allow jail populations to creep back up (mostly by refusing to release people detained pretrial, even if they pose no immediate danger), devastating coronavirus outbreaks have followed. In some cities, severe court slowdowns and failures to take preventative measures within jail systems have exacerbated the problem. As of February 2, more than 452,000 incarcerated people and prison staff across the country have contracted coronavirus, and nearly 2,400 have died.

• Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered more than 1,000 active duty troops to help speed up state vaccination efforts, and the Biden administration announced that it will use the Defense Production Act to boost supplies of PPE and scale up vaccine production.
   
• Parler offered the Trump Organization a 40 percent stake in the company if Donald Trump made it his primary social network—while Trump was still in office. The deal seems to have been former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale’s brilliant idea, but it was shut down after the White House counsel’s office caught wind of it. 
   
• Joe Biden said he doesn't think Trump should continue to receive classified intelligence briefings, citing his erratic behavior: "What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?"
   
• Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Andrew Clyde (R-GA) have been fined $5000 for bypassing the House’s new metal detectors, after the House passed a rules change earlier this week to mandate fines for members who evade security protocols.
   
• Amazon failed to delay a unionization vote by its warehouse workers in Bessemer, AL, for the second time. Some 6,000 Amazon employees will begin sending in their votes on Monday.
   
• Fox News has canceled Lou Dobbs Tonight, a day after the voting machine company Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Dobbs, and two other hosts.
   
• A Trump-appointed federal judge has approved Capitol insurrectionist Jenny Cudd’s request to go on vacation in Mexico, after Cudd was indicted on five federal charges. Cool cool cool cool cool. (That judge, Trevor McFadden, also blocked the release of Trump's tax returns for made-up nonsense reasons.)
   
• Moderators of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit have turned on each other over the sale of movie rights to their story. A sad day when a group of people brought together by a shared desire to get rich quick are torn asunder by money, of all things. 
   
• OAN spent the day airing MyPillow guy Mike Lindell’s “documentary” about how the election was stolen for 12 straight hours, prefaced by a 90-second disclaimer about how OAN does not endorse anything the MyPillow guy might have to say about voting machine companies.
   
• David Hogg plans to launch his own pillow company to “put MyPillow out of business.” Lie Down with Hoggs? Let Sleeping Hoggs Lie? David and Go-Lyeth? We offer up any of these perfect names in exchange for a humble podcast sponsorship. 
   
• Speaking of which (unfortunately), Mike Pence will launch his own podcast. Say what you will about Mike Pence, but no one ever gets bored of listening to that guy talk. 
   
• Actor Christopher Plummer has died, at age 91. Here’s a great bit from Plummer’s memoir about his sudden realization that The Sound of Music was...good. 

New Israeli studies found that the country’s rapid vaccine rollout has dramatically driven down coronavirus cases. Israel has outpaced every other country in vaccinating its population, and rates of both infections and hospitalizations among people who were vaccinated (in this first study, people 60 years and older) fell quickly in just a few weeks. Researchers were able to isolate other factors that reduce the number of infections, including lockdowns, and concluded that even taking those factors into account, the vaccines had a significant impact. Early data also suggested that the vaccines are working nearly as well in the real world as they did in clinical trials. Those results won’t be a breeze to replicate, with contagious variants on the loose and vaccines still in short supply, and Israel itself is still under a nationwide lockdown, but it’s a heartening first glimpse of vaccinations beginning to curb the pandemic in practice.

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Coronavirus vaccines have already caused a drop in coronavirus case numbers in nursing homes across the U.S. 

Joe Biden has signed an executive order to increase the annual refugee admissions cap to 125,000 in the fiscal year that starts on October 1. 

A 120-member volunteer force has made its mission to help Florida seniors navigate the process of booking vaccine appointments. 

The NFL has offered up all of its stadiums as potential mass-vaccination sites.