President Biden met with ten Senate Republicans on Monday evening to discuss their coronavirus relief bill but seemed unwilling to lower the price tag attached to the Democrats’ version of the legislation, Politico reported Tuesday.
Democrats are pushing to pass a $1.9 trillion relief bill, which includes provisions to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, $400 in additional weekly unemployment benefits through September, and $1,400 checks to most Americans. (It is unclear what the income cutoff will be for those receiving checks.) The Republican counteroffer totaled $618 billion, with more targeted checks at $1,000 for Americans making less than $40,000 a year, and an extension of federal unemployment benefits at the current $300 per week.
Democrats are planning to pass their relief package via budget reconciliation, which requires a simple Senate majority and eliminates the possibility of a filibuster.
Biden “did not discourage the thought that the Senate was going to move forward with budget reconciliation. He didn’t tell us that that’s not going to happen,” Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.V.) told Politico after the meeting with the president.
Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) also indicated there was no breakthrough in talks.
“I wouldn’t say that we came together on a package tonight. No one expected that in a two-hour meeting,” Collins told reporters.
Biden was open to the idea of making stimulus checks more targeted, but also spoke about his experience with the budget reconciliation process when he was a senator, suggesting he could move forward without reckoning with a possible GOP filibuster, a source told Politico. While he seemed eager to hear Republican priorities, he didn’t express a willingness to accommodate any specific point of contention.
For example, Biden “didn’t concede anything” on education funding, Senator Bill Cassidy (R., La.) told The New York Times. “He said, ‘Let’s have our staffs share numbers and let’s build on that.’”
The budget reconciliation process would allow Senate Democrats to pass coronavirus relief legislation with a simple majority, avoiding a potential filibuster. Democrats would need all 50 of their senators along with Vice President Kamala Harris in order to pass the legislation.
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat, has stated his preference for more targeted checks as well as infrastructure legislation in place of a large spending bill. However, the state’s Republican governor Jim Justice backed a large-scale stimulus on Monday, saying “if we actually throw away some money right now, so what?”