WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic leaders have strong momentum on their side as Congress prepares its first votes on the party’s $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill: Would any Democrat dare vote to overturn new President Joe Biden’s leadership initiative?
The majority of the 10-vote House of Democrats leaves little room for defections in the face of strong Republican opposition, and they have none in the 50-50 Senate that they control only with Vice President Kamala Harris ’tiebreaker vote. There are still internal democratic disputes over issues such as raising the minimum wage, the amount of aid being wrapped up in troubled local and state governments, and whether to extend the emergency unemployment benefit for another month.
Still, with the House Budget Committee expected to approve the 591-page package on Monday, Democrats across the spectrum of the party show little indication that they are willing to embarrass Biden with a notorious defeat in the month of his presidency.
This setback would cause initial blows to both Biden and the new Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, DN.Y. It could also hurt Congress Democrats in general by risking its repercussions in the 2022 election if they do not unite effectively against clear enemies such as the pandemic and the frozen economy.
“Think very seriously before casting a decisive vote against the legislative agenda of your own party’s president,” said Ian Russell, a longtime Democratic consultant. But he warned lawmakers must decide “for themselves how their vote will unfold” at home.
The problem that has caused the deepest divisions is a push, largely by progressives, to raise the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour for five years. The current low of $ 7.25 came into effect in 2009.
“It was the No. 1 priority of the Progressives,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., President of the Progressive Caucus Congress, said in an interview last week. “That’s something we’ve worked on and something we’ve promised to the American people.”
A global relief bill, which includes raising the minimum wage, is expected to clean up the House and probably the Senate as well. But the fate of the minimum wage increase is more shaky in the Senate, where West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the House, has said the $ 15 target is too expensive.
Senator Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz, has suggested he could also oppose it. He said Democrats should not pass it by special rules that would allow them to avoid a Republican hurdle, which would require overcoming 60 unattainable votes.
Manchin’s office did not make him available for an interview. Earlier this month he told The Hill, a political publication, that $ 11 an hour would be “responsible and reasonable.”
Even more ominously, the Senate MP is expected to rule soon on whether the minimum wage provision should be withdrawn from the bill. Under the streamlined procedures used by Democrats, items that are not primarily related to the budget cannot be included, and it is unclear whether Democrats would have the votes to overturn that decision.
Yet, even in a Congress where virtually all Democratic votes are needed, few or some are openly threatening to withdraw the entire bill unless they get in their way.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., The main sponsor of his House’s minimum wage, said Democrats must act bravely and pass a package with the minimum wage increase. He responded indirectly when asked if he would be willing to commit to keeping the plan on the general bill.
“All Democrats understand that at this time in history, this time of unprecedented pain and suffering for working families, it is absolutely imperative to support the president, do what the American people want, and approve this package,” he said. in a statement. interview.
Moderate Representative Brad Schneider, D-Ill., Also noted unease over the intractable demands. The road to success is to “press as hard as you can to get everything you can now that you want, not compromise your principles and know that tomorrow will be another day,” said Schneider, leader of the new democratic coalition, a group of nearly 100 moderate House Democrats.
Republicans say the proposal is overpriced, not aimed at people most in need of help, and insufficiently inciting schools. reopening and is a party in favor of democratic power to ignore the Republican Party.
The bill would provide single payments of $ 1,400 to millions of low- and middle-income people, increase tax credits for minors that could be paid in advance and monthly, and provide weekly federal unemployment benefits of $ 400 extra up to ‘August. It would also provide hundreds of billions of dollars for state and local governments, closed schools, COVID-19 vaccines, and testing and hardship for airlines, restaurants, and other businesses.
History has rich examples of lawmakers who have faced fundamental decisions about whether they loyally support the priorities of their party presidents, with mixed results.
In 2017, three defections from the Republican Party, the most famous for the late after midnight, of the late Senator John McCain of R-Ariz. – dropped the commercial effort of then-President Donald Trump to repeal the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. McCain’s vote provoked endless enmity from Trump. Of the other two, Maine Sen. Susan Collins was re-elected last year and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski faces re-election in 2022.
In 1993, the new President Bill Clinton’s $ 500 million deficit reduction plan was approved by the House by a single vote after first-year Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky agreed to support it. Mezvinsky, who had previously criticized the measure because it did not have enough spending cuts, voted “yes” after Clinton asked for support in a call he made to the House’s wardrobe during the vote.
“I told him I knew how important he was and I wouldn’t let him down, but I said it would just be the tiebreaker vote,” he recalled this week in an interview. He said he also told her, “If I throw you over, you’ll lose that seat.”
Both scenarios developed.
The package passed 218-216, saved by his casting vote. And the legislator, whose last name is now Margolies after the divorce, lost his re-election two years later than what was a heavily GOP district in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
He never returned to Congress. But one of his sons, Marc Mezvinsky, later married Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea.