Ten Senate Republicans, led by Susan Collins of Maine, are pushing in opposition to President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal with a counteroffer lower than one-third as giant. The Republicans suggest reduction of solely $600 billion, considerably lower than contained in former President Barack Obama’s (famously inadequate) stimulus invoice, which was meant to jolt the economic system out of the Nice Recession.
How Biden responds to the counterproposal is being framed by Republicans as a check of his name for “unity.” However that’s simply politics. What issues extra is understanding what Republican lawmakers have stripped out of the president’s authentic proposal:
- Biden’s financial plan would increase the federal minimal wage to $15 per hour—a transfer championed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The wage would rise step by step, and hit the goal by 2025.
- The Republican plan does away with any improve within the federal minimal, which has been caught at $7.25 an hour for greater than a decade.
Extra particulars right here, however Biden’s plan extends and improves unemployment advantages by:
- Growing the $300-per-week unemployment enhance handed by Congress final month to $400
- Extending common unemployment and the Pandemic Unemployment Help program (which applies to impartial contractors, and so forth.). Final month, Congress prolonged each of those applications by way of mid-March. Biden’s proposal would prolong them by way of September.
The Republican plan dials this manner again. Based on the Washington Publish:
- The GOP plan would hold the enhance funds at $300 per week and prolong them by way of June, in response to sources with data of the plan.
The end result of the Democrats’ internecine battle over stimulus checks got here all the way down to the next: Right here come your (kinda) $2,000 checks. Biden proposed sending individuals $1,400 along with $600 that was beforehand permitted, totaling $2,000, per his public promise. His plan would means-test the recipients: Folks making as much as $75,000, and households making $150,00, will get cash.
The Republican plan would rein within the largesse. They suggest $1,000 per head, however just for individuals incomes not more than $50,000 a 12 months, or households making as much as $100,000.
That is all within the title of “focused” reduction, in response to Sen. Rob Portman, who did the morning present loop.
A gaggle of GOP senators, together with Sen. Rob Portman, despatched a letter to President Biden proposing their very own Covid-19 reduction package deal framework and asking to work collectively.
“We must be positive that is focused,” Portman says. https://t.co/iFpCBrgsrH #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/4wycNDmQO8— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) January 31, 2021
Put together your self for extra such rhetoric. The Republicans, debt hawks solely when politically handy, will seemingly proceed to try to squeeze cash out of this plan. The large query is whether or not Democrats will enable their grander purpose—lowering financial inequality—to be eradicated from the invoice.
Biden’s plan contains billions of {dollars} for cash-starved state and native governments, vaccine distribution, lease help, a toddler revenue tax credit score, and extra public well being jobs. The Republicans are bidding all of that adieu.