Congress: Covid-19 relief workers face lack of time with impending impeachment

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Meanwhile, the administration is only two weeks away from the start of an impeachment trial that will put an end to all other Senate business, giving even more pressure to act quickly. How quickly Biden must drop his calls for unity in the name of doing something amid a pandemic will set the tone for his relationship with Republicans on Capitol Hill and, more broadly, set the tone for his first 100 days as president leading to an era. crisis.
The impeachment article will be delivered around 7 p.m. ET on Monday, when House Directors lead it to the Senate Chamber. Senators will be sworn in on Tuesday, then there will be a hiatus of about two weeks until the focus is again on impeachment. In the meantime, Democrats will fight to confirm as many of Biden’s nominations as possible. They will also have to decide soon how to proceed with the organizational resolution which has been stuck for a week. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted Democrats promise – in writing – not to blow up the obstruction in the organizing resolution. Democrats don’t want to give up their influence on this even though they say they don’t have immediate plans to get rid of the filibuster.

It takes 60 votes to pass this organizational resolution. That means McConnell dares Democrats not to blow up the filibuster in a disagreement over whether they promise not to blow up the filibuster. Once again: To pass this resolution without Republicans, Democrats would have to change the rules to allow it to pass a simple majority of 51 votes. That would – in essence – eradicate the filibuster.

What we told us last night about bipartisanship

Several aides CNN spoke to made it clear that Sunday’s call between a group of bipartisan senators and National Economic Council director Brian Deese, Jeff Zients and Louisa Terrell was a good first step, but there is always broad disagreement over the overall price of this stimulus. package and what is actually needed.
Everyone recognizes that more money for tests and vaccines is essential. But a minimum wage of $ 15? Billions of state and local funding? $ 1,400 in stimulus checks? Several aides told CNN that senators on both sides argued they needed more data on why nearly $ 2 trillion was the right choice. They just passed a package of over $ 900 billion a month ago. A Republican aide told CNN that it wasn’t just Republicans who balked at that number, but some of the Democrats on the call were also “cool” to spend that much. Checks, they said, needed to be more targeted. If a fight over the price of a stimulus bill sounds familiar to you, it’s because it is. The cost of the latest stimulus package tormented Republicans and Democrats for six months the last time Congress attempted this.

Everything you need to know: After the meeting, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine who is widely regarded as one of the most “captivating” Republican senators are on this package released a statement to CNN saying, “He seems premature to consider a package of this size and scope. “

In other words: if Biden and his team want this done quickly, they may have to withdraw their goal of signing 10 Republicans and move (AKA as early as a week or two) to the next step. : a procedural budgetary maneuver that would only require 51 votes.

Small reminder on this great old process: reconciliation

This is a process that requires the House and Senate Budget Committees to first pass a budget with specific instructions to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees to write a draft. Covid relief law. The Senate should then pass this budget with 51 votes, but when it does, it will unlock a long Senate budget vote that will keep us awake all night as MPs propose hundreds of political amendments.

Once the budget is passed in the House and Senate, each committee drafts its Covid relief bill. And this bill will have to meet a very specific set of criteria that will be tested by the parliamentarian of the Senate in a process that we will affectionately call a “Byrd bath.” It is named after former Senator Robert Byrd, who established a set of rules that reconciliation bills must follow to ensure that the budget process is not exploited by the majority party. There are a handful of rules.
  1. Supporters of the proposal must prove that the bill in question increases income or reduces expenses.
  2. That these changes are not just “incidental”.
  3. That all changes fall within the remit of the committees described in the reconciliation instructions.
  4. Senators for their proposal must realize at least the same amount of savings as the House bill. And you have to achieve the same goals within the one-year and five-year windows.
  5. The proposal cannot have any impact on social security.
  6. The allowance must not increase expenses or decrease income outside the budget window if you want it to be permanent.

There are already extensive discussions underway in the House and in the Senate Budget, Finance, and Ways and Means committees as to what provisions would be acceptable under these guidelines. There is currently a vigorous debate as to whether certain appropriation arrangements would be acceptable (traditionally, appropriations are not reconciled). There are debates on whether the minimum wage of $ 15 would meet the criteria. There are a lot of very smart people on the Republican and Democratic side who have been wrestling with these issues for weeks now. And that’s because there’s always been an expectation that at some point Democrats would have to pull the plug from bipartisan talks and do it without Republicans.

Not so fast

Moving forward with reconciliation would still require Democrats to be fully united. This means that it is not just progressive members like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who are leading this charge. Democrats need 100% unity. They need Joe Manchin from West Virginia, Senator from Montana Jon Tester and Senator from Maine Angus King, Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly from Arizona. We don’t yet know how these MPs would vote if the reconciliation process begins within the next week or two. Would they argue that there was not enough good faith negotiations with the Republicans? We just don’t know at the moment.

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