Coronavirus Stimulus Bolsters Biden, Shows Potential Path for Agenda

With Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate far apart on how much they were willing to accept in new pandemic spending, Mr. Biden on Dec. 2 threw his support behind the $900 billion plan being pushed by the centrist group. The total was less than half of the $2 trillion that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, had been insisting on.

Mr. Biden’s move was not without risks. If it had failed to affect the discussions, the president-elect risked looking powerless to move Congress before he had taken the oath of office. But members of both parties said his intervention was constructive and gave Democrats confidence to pull back on their demands.

“It helped a lot with the Democrats, because it told them he doesn’t want to have a worsened economy and more serious unemployment and a shortfall in vaccine money when he takes office,” Ms. Collins said.

Deep disagreements over the spending level had been an impediment since the spring, when Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader, balked at another round of pandemic relief, saying he wanted to pause and see how the more than $2.8 trillion already allocated was being used. Democrats, on the other hand, were pushing a sweeping, $3.4 trillion measure that would never pass the Senate, which included as much as $1 trillion in relief for state and local governments that Mr. McConnell called a nonstarter. Then the rescue plan got caught up in the election, and any chance for movement faded even as the crisis persisted and the economic situation of millions worsened.

With the election over, the centrists renewed their efforts; eight of them met at the home of Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, on Capitol Hill on Nov. 17 to exchange ideas and plot strategy. In contrast to other such efforts, the participants decided to put ideas that had been hashed out in what were described as tough negotiations into legislative language — not just a series of principles or talking points. That gave heft to their proposal, and negotiators said it would serve as a model for the future.

“We didn’t just give them a memo with concepts,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat who participated in the talks despite his role in the party leadership. “We gave them an actual bill.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/us/politics/biden-stimulus.html