WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrats’ hopes of including a minimum wage hike in their $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 bill seemed nearly dead as Senate prepared to debate its own version of it by the house adopted aid package.
Four days after the Chamber MP said Senate rules prohibit the inclusion of an outright increase in the minimum wage in the emergency measure, the Democrats seemed to have exhausted their most realistic options to save the pay increase quickly. In one decision, they abandoned a potential change that threatened tax increases for large companies that don’t raise workers’ wages to certain levels.
“At the moment we may not have a path, but I hope we can find one” for pushing the federal wage floor up to $ 15 an hour, said Democratic Senate leader Richard Durbin of Illinois No. 2.
Senate Democrats hope to reveal their version of the comprehensive aid package and start a debate as early as Wednesday. Congress leaders want President Joe Biden to send legislation to fight the pandemic and support the economy by March 14, the date lawmakers approved unemployment benefits in December.
The general emergency relief bill is Biden’s biggest early legislative priority. It emerges as a first test of his ability to unite Democrats in the Senate – over which the party has no votes – and risk causing lasting damage to his influence if he fails. Republicans are strongly against the legislation and it could unanimously oppose, as GOP House lawmakers did when that chamber approved the bill early Saturday.
The measure would bring in $ 1,400 to individuals plus hundreds of billions of dollars for schools and colleges, COVID-19 vaccines and tests, public transportation systems, tenants and small businesses. It also has money for childcare, tax breaks for families with children, and assistance for states willing to expand Medicaid coverage for low-income residents.
Senate Committee on Budgets Chair, Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Said he wanted Democrats to ignore the MP’s ruling blocking the minimum wage increase. He also wants them to vote to eliminate filibusters – procedural delays requiring an unattainable 60 votes for Democrats to gain the upper hand.
Neither idea seemed to have the backing of the Democrats or the White House needed to succeed. But Sanders, the Senate’s lead sponsor of the $ 15 increase, said he would force a vote on an amendment that would restore the minimum wage increase anyway.
“This is the soul of the Democratic Party,” he said of the proposal. Recognizing that his effort may be falling short, he said, “If we fail this legislation, I will come back” and offer it in the near future.
The Senate is split 50-50 among the parties, and Vice President Kamala Harris can only cast tie-breaking votes. Democrats are applying a rarely used procedure for the COVID-19 relief law that will protect the measure from filibusters.
Biden discussed the emergency response Monday in a virtual meeting with nine Senate Democrats, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia, an opponent of the $ 15 hourly rate. A White House statement said the group was “united in the goal of rapidly launching a major package. to assume that the magnitude reflects the challenges facing our country. “
Democrats, who need unanimity to pass the legislation, are pushing for several changes to the House’s measure.
Manchin told reporters he wants the bill’s emergency unemployment benefits, set by the House at $ 400 weekly, to return to the current $ 300 figure set in December. That will certainly divide and provoke strong opposition from progressives.
He and Senator Jon Tester, D-Mont., Also said they want spending to be more “ targeted, ” which, according to Manchin, meant “ helping the people who need help the most. ” Republicans have said the legislation is too expensive and unnecessarily spending money.
Senator Angus King, I-Maine, said he wants the bill to be $ 350 billion for state and local governments to specify minimum amounts for municipal governments and may want $ 50 billion to improve broadband coverage.
The MP on Monday ruled that some House-approved provisions, which would bring in billions to help some struggling retirement plans and help people who have lost their jobs pay health insurance, according to Senate Treasury Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D. -Ore.
The House-approved minimum wage language would gradually increase the federal floor to $ 15 an hour by 2025, more than double the $ 7.25 since 2009.
After the MP said that provision should be dropped, Sanders and Wyden said they were working on plans to increase taxes for large companies that fail to meet certain levels of workers’ wages.
But that plan was dropped, Democrats said Monday, with Sanders saying the proposal would have been too easy for employers to dodge. It has always been questionable whether pressuring companies with tax increases would have received enough Democratic support to survive, and the idea would have affected only a fraction of the workers who paid the minimum wage.
Raising the minimum wage has wide support among Democrats. But while it is passionately embraced by the party’s progressives, at least two Senate moderates – Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – have expressed opposition to its inclusion in the broader emergency measure, damaging prospects and tensions within the party fanned.
Democrats now have to decide “how we do the minimum wage as part of another piece of legislation or on our own,” said Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal.
While eliminating filibusters or overruling the MP has strong support from progressives, the ideas are not appealing to moderates. They are wary of erasing procedures that the party has used in the past and could use again to protect its priorities when it is in the minority.
Among those who have long been behind filibuster preservation is Biden, who has served in the Senate for nearly four decades.
“The president’s opinion on the filibuster is well known. He has not changed that position, ”White House press secretary Jen Psaki said emphatically on Monday.
Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.