(CNN) – United States President Joe Biden will meet next Monday with 10 Republican senators who have worked out a small counter-proposal to his $ 1.9 billion covid-19 bailout plan, in the most critical test yet of his centralized pledge forge in unity along bitter party lines.
But hopes for a rare bipartisan deal at the start of a new administration still seem questionable, as the offer from Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins and her colleagues has a potentially fatal problem. It is less than a third of the amount of economic shock treatment the White House needs.
Biden’s original legislation proposes direct payments to most Americans and extends unemployment benefits through September as it seeks to close a huge hole in the economy caused by the pandemic. It also raises the federal minimum wage to $ 15 an hour, fulfilling an important campaign promise. The plan will generate hundreds of billions of dollars to expand COVID-19 testing, improve vaccine implementation, and get children back to school.
The president must now assess whether the new Republican bid is a bona fide initial bid in an effort to find common ground, or an exercise in deception that would cause lasting damage to the authority and political capital of a new president if he would accept it.
And while Biden is eager to demonstrate his ability to make a divided Washington work, he knows he risks breaking the support of Capitol Democrats if he makes significant progress in his own plan to win Republican support in the Senate. decreases.
The White House welcomes the 10 Republicans’ willingness to compromise with the president, but also subtly underlines that a plan far behind Biden’s ambitions will not be acceptable.
“As leading economists said, danger doesn’t do too much now: it does too little. Americans of both sides expect their leaders to adhere to it, ” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Sunday afternoon.
Senators said in a joint statement on Sunday that they appreciated Biden’s prompt response to their proposal and had agreed to an invitation to meet with the president at the White House Monday afternoon.
The intrigue over the covid aid negotiations adds another high-stakes showdown to an already tense and belligerent moment on Capitol Hill as the political forces that will shape the first two years of Biden’s presidency emerge.
The fierce distrust between Democrats and Republicans in the House over personal security in the wake of the January 6 uprising, sparked by former President Donald Trump, means that any hope of bipartisan negotiations over Covid aid is almost unthinkable.
Trump’s decision to assert control of the House bank, with his meeting last week with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his weekend call with QAnon supporter and Rep. Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene is sure to inject new poison into the political sphere.
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And the prospects for cross-party talks in the Senate are bleak as he prepares to impeach Trump next week, in which it is already clear that there are enough Republicans to prevent a two-thirds majority from trying to acquit him for the most scandalous attack of Trump. a president against the US government in history.
Meanwhile, Biden will try to keep the momentum from his early weeks in office with a major foreign policy speech (moved from Monday to the end of the week due to a snowstorm) and new initiatives to address the job crisis.
Democrats ready to take action despite Republican offers
Democratic leaders in Congress this week are poised to take a route that would launch a controversial budget process known as reconciliation to pass the $ 1.9 trillion bailout bill without Republican votes – a move critics of Biden argue that their offer of unity and negotiation is hollow.
Reconciliation is a measure that allows for the rapid adoption of laws related to budget, expenses and debt. It’s controversial because it would allow Democrats to pass the package by simple majority and bypass Republican blocking tactics based on the 60-voting super majority needed to pass most of the legislation.
The new president’s dilemma is exactly the kind of scenario he said during the election campaign that could navigate his decades of experience in the Senate. The dire political conditions in which his first big deal will take place explain why many key players in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, have long been skeptical of his dual ambitions.
With Democrats pushing for the use of their narrow majority in the House and Senate to act quickly, Biden must also consider how to turn down any Republican offer he deems insufficient to prevent future cross-party coalitions from being destroyed.
The Republican plan includes pledges from 10 senators, enough for the Senate to pass under normal rules and for Biden to aim for a rare victory that would unite a Democratic president and a sizable group of GOP members. Utah Senator Mitt Romney, Collins and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who hopes to convince Biden for future bipartisan efforts, are among the senators who have joined the counter offer.
However, any hope of a deal is likely based on whether the Republican plan is an initial offer in a negotiation that could significantly increase its price or is a token gesture never designed to be successful.
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If so, the Republican plan will seem little more than an attempt to relieve pressure on the party to produce its own version of a credible bailout plan and a trap to separate the new president from his party.
Speaking at CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Brian Deese, director of Biden’s National Economic Council, said the president’s plan is just right for the scale of the challenge facing the economy.
“We are in a unique crisis. And the elements of this plan are really designed and designed to face that crisis, ”said Deese, referring to the worst economic year since the aftermath of World War II, with one million new jobless claims and 30 million Americans for the first time. with very little food.
In addition to that dire reality, Deese also warned that the rescue plan must be large enough to speed up vaccine delivery to end the pandemic and help millions of children return to school.
“We are certainly open to input from anywhere we can find a constructive idea to make this package as effective as possible. But the president is unshakeable when it comes to the speed with which we need to act to face this crisis, ”said Deese.
Later on Sunday, after Biden met with his advisers to discuss the aid package, a senior government official said that Biden was open to some negotiations, but that the $ 600 billion Republican plan “won’t ease the itch.
The official offered the Republican group a carrot and Pamela Brown told CNN that the president is specifically prepared to discuss the suspension of stimulus vouchers for families earning more than $ 150,000 a year.
One complication is that the smaller Republican plan would likely force the White House to return to Capitol Hill for further extensions of unemployment benefits within months, at a time when an already treacherous political climate is likely to have deteriorated and an agreement will be reached. have been reached. even harder to forge.
Early indications were that Capitol Democrats have little appetite for the Republican counter-proposal at a time when many are warning that quick action is mandatory to keep the economy from slipping into an even deeper hole.
Senate leader Chuck Schumer said New York Daily News that the Republican offer was insufficient.
“They should negotiate with us, not make or leave an offer,” he said.
And Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said on ABC News “This Week” that he believed the Democrats had enough votes to pass the bill by reconciliation.
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Signs that duality will be impossible
The gap between two conflicting views on the scale of the crisis and the measures that could remedy it was highlighted when CNN’s Dana Bash interviewed Ohio Senator Rob Portman, one of the top 10 Republican senators to join the alternate plan.
“It’s extraordinary to me that you have a great speech … at the inauguration, where you talk about the need to heal and the need for us to work together as a country, Republicans and Democrats alike, and a promise to do more reaches Republicans. And then the next day a US $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 package lands on our desks, when just a month ago we approved a US $ 900 billion COVID-19 package that was completely twofold, ”said Portman.
Portman also criticized the possible use of reconciliation, despite the fact that Republicans used it in the latest administration to push through Trump’s tax cuts bill and in an attempt to invalidate the Affordable Care Act.
Still, many Democrats probably estimate that most Americans will hardly feel alienated by an obscure parliamentary procedure. For them, passing the bill in full without Republican backing is not only vital to sustain a deeply destabilized economy, it is also a pivotal moment to be used to demonstrate Democratic power in Washington at the opening. of the new presidency.
And there will be concern about a repeat of the scenario played out during the attempts to bypass the ACA during the Obama administration. The former president tried to accomplish some Republican goals, a process that delayed the bill for months, but the Republican Party turned it down anyway.
And unless Biden can convince Republicans to significantly increase his offer, his own need to show his authority and face a crisis that will determine his presidency will likely weigh against his hope of winning Republican votes he doesn’t strictly need. has.