During the Great Recession 12 years ago, nervous about sticker shock, President Barack Obama sought to keep the price tag for his Recovery Act under $1 trillion. On Thursday night, undeterred by Republicans rediscovering their allergy to deficit spending, President-elect Joe Biden unveiled an “American Rescue Plan” that would cost just under $2 trillion. Then he announced that he will appear before a joint session of Congress next month to ask for even more. “I know what I just described will not come cheaply,” Biden said during a Thursday night speech in Wilmington, Del. “But failure to do so will cost us dearly.” Biden’s $1.9 trillion proposal includes $400 billion for provisions to fight the coronavirus with more vaccines and testing, while reopening schools; more than $1 trillion in direct relief to families, including stimulus payments and increased unemployment insurance benefits; and $440 billion for aid to communities and businesses, including $350 billion in emergency funding to state and local governments. The incoming president used his prime-time address to unabashedly make the case for deficit spending. “In this moment of crisis, with interest rates at historic lows, we cannot afford inaction,” Biden said. “It’s not just that smart fiscal investments, including deficit spending, are more urgent than ever. It’s that the return on these investments — in jobs, in racial equity — will prevent long-term economic damage and the benefits will far surpass the costs. A growing number of top economists has shown even our debt situation will be more stable — not less stable — if we seize this moment with vision and purpose.” This week’s body count and jobs report make the case better than Biden ever could for going big.Nearly 1 million Americans filed new unemployment claims last week. This was up by 181,000 from the week before, the largest increase since the beginning of the pandemic and the highest number of new unemployment claims since August. An additional 284,000 claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the insurance program for gig and self-employed workers. After 140,000 people lost their jobs in December, the first decline in months, the total number of Americans enrolled in unemployment programs at the start of this year was 18.4 million. For more than 40 weeks now, the number of new jobless claims has been higher than the worst week of the Great Recession. The United States may surpass 400,000 confirmed deaths from the coronavirus before Biden takes office. At least 387,299 fatalities have been reported, including 3,856 on Thursday. More than 4,000 deaths were reported on Tuesday and Wednesday. About a million new cases a day are being reported. The vaccine rollout continues to be plagued by problems. While 30.6 million doses have been distributed, only 9.7 million people have received shots, according to the CDC, far below what President Trump had promised by the end of the year. Biden called these numbers a “dismal failure” and reitered his goal to distribute 100 million shots by the end of his first 100 days in office. “This will be one of the most challenging operational efforts we’ve undertaken as a nation,” he said. “We’ll have to move heaven and Earth.” Nevertheless, Biden’s big ask is remarkable considering how little breathing room he has on Capitol Hill. For a stretch in 2009, Democrats controlled 60 seats in the Senate and 256 seats in the House. After Georgia’s results are certified, Democrats will hold 50 seats in the Senate – with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris available to break ties – and 222 seats in the House. After the Recovery Act passed, Democrats moved on to health care and climate change, though cap-and-trade never passed the Senate. In the 2010 midterms, though, they lost control of the House. This happened, in part, because many voters felt that the Obama administration was not sufficiently focused on the struggling economy. Even as the Senate prepares for a second impeachment trial of Trump, Biden aides say he is determined to convey that he is focused primarily on the pocketbook and public health issues that preoccupy most Americans. Biden allies see demonstrating this to voters as key to holding their narrow majorities in the 2022 midterms. This week, he is not giving voice to the anger at Trump. He has been letting other Democrats, and some Republicans, do that. He will give another covid-related speech this afternoon. “We know how to multitask there,” Harris told NPR in an interview that aired Friday morning. “We have to multitask, which means, as with anyone, we have a lot of priorities and we need to see them through.” Biden faces pressure from his left to do even more on coronavirus relief.But the president-elect is holding out hope to woo at least 10 Senate Republicans to back his bill with a filibuster-proof majority. This could prove difficult with such a large price tag. “Incoming Senate majority leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) had urged Biden to consider a higher price tag than what he was initially eyeing for the proposal,” Erica Werner and Jeff Stein report. “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who will chair the Budget Committee, has said he is working to put together a massive stimulus bill that could pass under special budget rules with a simple majority vote in the Senate, instead of the 60-vote margin normally required. Biden, however, wants to try for a bipartisan majority on his first bill — although his team appears to have conducted little outreach to congressional Republicans on the plan. “Democratic aides say that if Republicans do not appear willing to cooperate, they can shift gears quickly and move to ‘budget reconciliation,’ the procedure that would allow them to pass legislation without GOP votes. That’s how Republicans passed their big tax-cut bill … Even holding enough Democrats together to pass legislation along party lines could prove a challenge. The most conservative Senate Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), has already expressed skepticism about the need for a new round of stimulus checks, while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that Biden isn’t going far enough by proposing $1,400 checks, even though Biden’s approach means most people will end up with $2,000 given the earlier batch of $600 checks.” International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said additional stimulus is needed in the United States as the pandemic is “moving from bad to worse.” She characterizes this period as an “unprecedented race" between the virus and the vaccines. “We are still faced with tremendous uncertainties about the exit from the health crisis and we do have a difficult period ahead,” Georgieva told Heather Long, adding that “there is scarring” we have yet to fully understand.
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