The US Senate has approved a budget resolution that would allow Democrats push through President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan without Republican support.
With the vote tied at 50 apiece, Vice President Kamala Harris cast her first tie-breaking vote to make it 51-50 votes to the democrats.
The budget will now return to the House of Representatives, where it will likely be approved again to reflect the changes made by the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer called passage of the resolution the “first big step to putting our country back on the road to recovery.”
The goal for the Democrats is to have COVID relief approved by March, when extra unemployment assistance and other pandemic aid expires. This means clearing the budget plan through the House quickly so that it can return to the Senate.
“Next week, we will be writing the legislation to create a path to final passage for the Biden American Rescue Plan, so that we can finish our work before the end of February,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues.
The push for stimulus comes amid new signs of a weakening U.S. economy. The US Labour Department announced in a report that employers added just 49,000 jobs in January, after cutting 227,000 jobs in December. Restaurants, retailers, manufacturers and even the health care sector let go of workers last month, with state and local governments also letting go of non-school employees.
The report also indicated that the unemployment rate fell to 6.3% from 6.7%, and there was a decline in the number of people who were either working or looking for a job, in a sign that some people are dropping out of the labour force.
“The latest jobs report is another confirmation that Americans need relief now—and that’s why Senate Democrats took a big first step toward passing a historic COVID relief package early this morning, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote,” Jaime Harrison, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, President Biden, who has been meeting with lawmakers in recent days to discuss the package, has sat down with the House committee chairs who will be assembling the bill under the budget process known as “reconciliation”, at the White House
Speaking to reporters at the start of the meeting, the President emphasized the need to pass another massive coronavirus relief package. Mr Biden said the governmental response to the financial crisis had taught him the negative impact of going too small with relief proposals.
“The one thing we learned is we can’t do too much here. We can do too little. We can do too little and sputter.
“It’s not just the macroeconomic impact on the economy and our ability to compete internationally. It is people’s lives. Real live people are hurting and we can fix it. We can fix it and the irony and all ironies is; if we help them, we are also helping our competitive capacity through the remainder of this decade.”
