WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th January, 2021) Democrats pushing forth a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan are hoping to secure cooperation from rival Republicans to avoid a partisan fight, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday.
"We will pass a reconciliation bill - if we need it," Pelosi told reporters, referring to the Democrats' ability to pass the bill by simple majority if required, without Republican votes. "We would hope that we would have bipartisan cooperation to meet the needs of the American people."
President Joe Biden, who took office on January 20, said on Monday that it could take a couple of weeks for the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives to finalize his COVID-19 relief plan, expressing hope that the matter would get adequate support from the Republicans in the Senate where the Democrats had a majority of just one.
But Democrats will use the reconciliation process if negotiations do not go well, he added.
Reconciliation is a process that allows the Senate to pass tax and spending legislation with a bare majority vote. Democrats and Republicans both have 50 seats in the Senate now, with Vice President Kamala Harrris having an additional vote to break the tie.
Mitch McConnell, Republican minority leader for the Senate, weighed in on Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus plan for the first time Monday, saying it "misses the mark." Elaborating, the noted that the Senate just approved an additional $900 billion in pandemic relief in December, and that any further action "should be smart and targeted, not just an imprecise deluge of borrowed money that would direct huge sums toward those who don't need it."
Congress passed the first Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act under the then Trump administration in March 2020, dispensing roughly $3 trillion as paycheck protection for workers, loans and grants for businesses and other personal aid for qualifying citizens and residents.
After that, Democrats in the House of Representatives got into a messy partisan fight with the Republicans in the Senate on a successive relief plan despite millions of Americans remaining jobless and being unable to pay for mortgage, rent and sometimes even food. The $900 billion relief was the last bipartisan bill passed by the Trump administration.
