WASHINGTON – Republican Senators have described President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 stimulus plan as a “clunker,” “bad politics” and “wildly expensive.”
The legislation, dubbed the American Rescue Plan, which the Senate started debating Thursday, is getting a partisan reception in Congress. Democrats want it passed soon, but little to no Republican members of Congress have so far voiced support.
It didn’t earn a single Republican vote when it passed last week in the House, and two Democrats voted against it. It’s unlikely any Senate Republican will vote for the bill. On Thursday, all Senate Republicans voted against even starting debate on the $1.9 trillion measure.
If the bill makes it through Congress with only Democratic support, it would stand out from the COVID relief plans Congress passed over the last year. Though the two sides have squabbled over priorities in each package, all were approved with members of both parties in support.
More: With the economy healing, is Biden’s $1.9T COVID-19 relief package too much?
In March of last year, the Senate, in a bipartisan vote, approved its largest emergency aid package in modern history, the $2.2 trillion CARES Act. Three smaller measures also passed with the overwhelming support of both parties. Most recently, despite weeks of painstaking negotiations and months of partisan finger-pointing, the Senate resoundingly passed a roughly $900 billion COVID-19 relief package in December.
That was hailed as a “bipartisan breakthrough.”
However, the current package going through the Senate is being slammed by Senate Republicans as partisan and excessive in its spending.
Now, as the Senate nears voting on the new legislation, GOP senators are pulling out all the stops to try to delay. Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson forced a reading of the entire 628-page bill Thursday. He said the tactic was about “educating” Americans about a bill he derided as full of provisions unrelated to COVID relief. .
Here is some of what Republicans dislike:
Money to state and local governments
The $350 billion to help cash-strapped states, cities and tribal governments confronting the pandemic has drawn ire from Republicans.
Pointing to the ballooning national debt, GOP lawmakers say the state and local aid provision is an unnecessary part of a “liberal wish list” that would disproportionately benefit blue states that were quicker than red ones to shut down their economies and suffered larger financial loses.
“They want to send wheelbarrows of cash to state and local bureaucrats to bail out mismanagement from before the pandemic,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday. “They’re changing the previous bipartisan funding formula in ways that will especially bias the money toward big blue states.”
Democratic lawmakers and a bipartisan coalition of mayors support the funding due to a double whammy saddling states and local government through no fault of their own: declining tax revenues from the economic shutdown and swelling public assistance needs.
Money for schools
Some moderate Republican lawmakers said the legislation would allocate billions for schools without doing anything meaningful to get them reopened to allow in-person teaching.
The legislation includes $130 billion for schools to deal with the virus. GOP Senators have expressed frustration with the amount, countering with $50 billion.
The lawmakers say the timeline for doling out funds is too late, as schools reopen this year following a vaccine rollout.
Child tax credit
Democrats want to increase the child tax credit up to $3,600 per child under age 6 and $3,000 for…