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Even though President Joe Biden’s first big bill has yet to clear Congress, lawmakers are already setting down markers for what they want in a second one: Recurring direct-payment checks and extended jobless benefits as long as the economy remains weak.
“We urge you to include recurring direct payments and automatic unemployment-insurance extensions tied to economic conditions in your Build Back Better long-term economic plan,” a group of Democratic senators wrote Tuesday in a letter to Biden and obtained by MarketWatch. The group includes three Senate committee leaders: Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders and Banking Chairman Sherrod Brown.
“This crisis is far from over, and families deserve certainty that they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Families should not be at the mercy of constantly-shifting legislative timelines and ad hoc solutions,” the group wrote.
The $1.9-trillion coronavirus stimulus that is Biden’s first big legislative priority is on what Democrats hope is a smooth path to enactment, with the Senate taking it up this week before returning it to the House next week. Because that bill was spun out from the fiscal 2021 budget resolution, it is immune to the filibuster and can pass the Senate with only 51 votes under a process called budget reconciliation.
Getting the stimulus package into law would be a big victory for Biden early in his administration, but would also clear the decks for a second reconciliation package that, thanks to a quirk in Senate rules first exploited by Republicans in 2017, would also be immune to the filibuster.
The expectation among many Democrats is that the second bill, dubbed Build Back Better, will be the vehicle for a massive infrastructure initiative that will have bipartisan support, as well as other policies that may be favored only by Democrats.
Tuesday’s letter will serve as an opening salvo in the debate over what some of those other elements besides infrastructure should be.
Already, two rounds of direct stimulus payments — at $1,200 and $600 per eligible individuals — have gone out, and the current budget-reconciliation bill under consideration in the Senate would add a third round, at $1,400 per individual. Pandemic-related jobless programs would also be extended in the stimulus bill.
In their letter, the senators said including those items and tying them to economic conditions in the Build Back Better bill later this year would ease uncertainty for those still struggling.
“Automatic stabilizers will give families certainty that more relief is coming, allowing them to make the best decisions about how to spend their relief payments as they receive them. Families shouldn’t have to worry about whether they’ll have enough money to pay for essentials in the months ahead as the country continues to fight a global pandemic,” they wrote.
