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The Senate will begin debating the American Rescue Plan this week, and while the overall size of the package is locked at $1.9 trillion, some last-minute Joe Manchin-ing could cause its contents to shift in the process.
- Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he plans to bring the coronavirus-relief package to the Senate floor as early as Wednesday. After Democratic leaders abandoned a contentious, loophole-ridden plan to raise wages by imposing tax penalties on corporations, the Senate aid package will almost certainly not include a minimum-wage increase—though progressives have continued urging leaders to do it and be legends, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has pledged to force a vote on a $15 wage amendment this week.
- A few other changes from the House version could also be in store. In his unquenchable thirst for public scorn, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has called for cutting the bill’s added unemployment benefits from $400 a week to $300. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) said she’s also in favor of further targeting unemployment benefits and the (already quite targeted) direct payments, in order to free up more funding for other programs. Some moderate Democrats have also suggested repurposing a chunk of the $350 billion for state and local governments towards infrastructure to expand broadband access.
- Senate Democrats will need all 50 votes to pass the package, and they won’t have much time to lure Joe Manchin back into formation—the bill needs to pass before unemployment benefits expire on March 14. But they may be able to use moderates’ demands as leverage to push for longer-term assistance. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and nine other Democrats have called on President Biden to include automatic stabilizers in his upcoming Build Back Better plan, which would automatically extend enhanced unemployment benefits and direct payments until the economy has recovered. A great way to avoid repeating Obama-era mistakes, and also to skip repeating the same dumb squabble a few months down the line!
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Fortunately, one of the relief bill’s best provisions looks likely to remain intact.
- Democrats’ proposal to send most parents a few hundred dollars every month for each child in their household (through the end of the year, for now) could cut child poverty in half. There was some concern that the monthly check aspect of the expanded child-tax credit, like the $15 minimum wage, would crumble in the iron fists of the Senate parliamentarian, but Wyden said on Tuesday that the measure was good to go.
- It remains completely bonkers that the Senate parliamentarian should loom all-powerfully over any aspect of the relief bill, but until Democrats either abolish the filibuster or change the limits of the budget-reconciliation process, their agenda will be at the mercy of arbitrary rules, and will only stand a chance of passing once or twice a year. On Monday, a reporter asked Manchin whether that reality might prompt him to reconsider his opinion on the filibuster, and he screamed back, “Never!” More or less everything depends on whether Democrats can change that answer.
Biden’s coronavirus relief package will mark a huge step toward pandemic recovery, in whatever form it finally takes. But it could do much more than that if Democrats were to decisively choose their agenda over antidemocratic Senate rules, and that will be the case for every piece of legislation going forward until something changes.
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On today's Pod Save America stream, Will Smith (!) joins Jon Favreau to talk about his new docuseries on the 14th Amendment, Amend: The Fight for America. They also get to the bottom of the question: will he one day run for office himself? Watch and subscribe → youtube.com/crookedmedia
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Republicans have heard the CDC’s urgent call to remain vigilant, and they have heroically answered, “lol, nah.” Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) announced on Tuesday that he has lifted Texas’s mask mandate, and will allow all businesses to reopen at 100 percent capacity on March 10. (When has lifting regulations and leaving Texans to fend for themselves ever backfired disastrously in recent memory?) Shortly thereafter, Gov. Tate Reeves (R-MS) announced that he would end Mississippi’s mask mandate, effective Wednesday of this week. Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) excitedly called for Indiana to be next. Republicans can’t block a wildly popular relief package or hide that the Biden administration has vastly improved the vaccine rollout, but they sure can try to sabotage the national recovery by coordinating to abandon public health measures at a critical moment, at the cost of thousands of lives.
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- The White House has withdrawn Neera Tanden’s OMB nomination, after it became clear that Senate Republicans pretending to be scandalized by mean tweets had enough votes to block her confirmation. President Biden said Tanden would get another role in his administration.
- The Biden administration has brokered a deal to have Merck help make Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which could potentially double the supply of doses that Johnson & Johnson can produce on its own.
- The U.S. has announced sanctions on seven senior Russian officials over the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, marking the Biden administration’s first action against Russia.
- Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) has called for Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) to resign. So has the New York Working Families Party, and many others from across the political spectrum.
- Testifying before the Senate on Tuesday, FBI Director Chris Wray told lawmakers (again) that there’s no evidence violent leftists cosplayed as Trump supporters on January 6. Wray said that FBI agents were currently pursuing roughly 2000 domestic terrorism cases, illustrating the rapidly growing threat.
- Many Jackson, MS, residents have been without running water for more than two weeks, after a winter storm in mid-February wreaked havoc on the city’s crumbling infrastructure.
- At least 13 people were killed in a crash in Southern California, when a gravel truck hit an overloaded SUV. Around a dozen others were hospitalized.
- After nailing her months-long audition process in the White House, Kayleigh McEnany has joined Fox News.
- Dr. Seuss Enterprises said it will stop publishing six Dr. Seuss books that contain racist imagery, and Republicans have universally taken it in stride. First Mr. Potato Head, now this—what's next, another private company making a harmless decision that has nothing to do with politics?!
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The Supreme Court seemed inclined to uphold Arizona’s discriminatory voting laws during oral arguments on Tuesday, in an ominous preview of what the coming months and years could look like. The good news is, the Court’s conservative wing didn’t seem convinced by Republicans’ clunky arguments for completely gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The bad news is, enough justices seemed very open to setting a new legal standard for determining which restrictive voting laws result in unconstitutional discrimination against voters of color. At one point, Republicans forgot to even bother pretending their case was about election integrity: When Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked a lawyer for the Arizona GOP why the party was interested in keeping these laws on the books, he answered, “Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.” Somehow, we don’t think Barrett will count it against them. H.R.1 or we’re fucked →
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President Biden announced that the U.S. will have enough vaccine supply by the end of May, thanks to the deal boosting Johnson & Johnson’s production. Two! Months! Faster!
Volunteer plumbers have descended on Texas to help repair the storm damage.
Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds has donated his childhood home in Las Vegas to the non-profit Encircle, as a space to help LGBTQ youth.
Dolly Parton got her first dose of the Moderna vaccine that she helped fund, filmed it as a pro-vaccination PSA, and sang “vaccine” to the tune of “Jolene,” even though people have probably been barraging her with that joke for months. A legend.
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