The United States House of Representatives approved this Saturday the stimulus plan of 1.9 trillion dollars that President Joe Biden is pushing, thanks solely to the votes of Democrats, a crucial first step before the Senate examines the text.
After hours of debate, the bill was adopted in the lower house by 219 votes in favor and 212 against, as Republicans criticize costly and poorly focused measures. The text will go to the Senate next week.
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“After 12 months of death and despair, the American recovery begins tonight,” said Congressman Brendan Boyle shortly before the approval of the package, which comes four days after the United States exceeded 500,000 deaths from covid-19.
The Biden plan aims to sustain the economy and boost vaccination against the coronavirus. He foresees several billion dollars to increase the rate of inoculation and testing, and also $ 130,000 million to help schools and colleges to reopen.
Confident, Democrats are counting on their tiny majority in the upper house for the text to pass. Then the lower house will have to return to achieve a final version.
“We have to approve the plan before March 14,” when unemployment benefits end, warned Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
“After a year of pandemic and economic crisis, Americans should know that their government acts for them. And as President Biden has said: ‘Aid is coming,'” said the Speaker of the House of Representatives, also a Democrat Nancy Pelosi, before the vote.
For his part, the head of the Republican minority Kevin McCarthy said that “the Democrats are so ashamed of all the waste of money not linked to the covid in this text that they approve it in the middle of the night.”
A little-known figure in Congress shook up the progress of this plan Thursday night.
The person in charge of parliamentary procedures, Elizabeth MacDonough, considered that the text could not include the increase in the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour as Biden wanted, given the simple majority voting format decided by the Senate Democrats. Normally 60 votes out of 100 are required for this type of law, and in this case with 51 votes the text could be approved by the upper house.
Although some progressives were outraged and called for disregarding the vision of this unelected official, Biden said Thursday he “respects” her opinion. But he urged Congress to “move quickly to adopt the plan.”
Biden announced that he will try to push separately to raise the federal minimum wage, currently at $ 7.25. Democratic heads of Congress anticipated on Friday that that would be the chosen path.
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– Checks for $ 1,400 –
The removal of the minimum wage increase could even facilitate the final approval of the package, as some moderate Democrats opposed this idea.
Senator Bernie Sanders and other Democrats are studying an alternative to boost the minimum wage increase: introducing an amendment into the bill that creates tax penalties for large companies that pay less than “a vital minimum.”
But moderate Democrats could also oppose this idea.
New aid checks for about $ 1,400 should be sent to Americans, depending on their income level, and unemployment benefits will be extended until September 30, 2021.