10 Senate Republicans Outline $600B Counteroffer To President Biden’s COVID-19 Relief Bill

By NPR News January 31, 2021

BY BARBARA SPRUNT

Ten Republican senators on Sunday requested a meeting with President Biden to detail a smaller counterproposal to his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, an alternative they believe could be approved “quickly by Congress with bipartisan support.”

The outreach from more moderate GOP lawmakers, led by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, came as many Democrats look to a process called budget reconciliation, which would potentially enable Democrats to approve the president’s plan without any Republican support.

“We recognize your calls for unity and want to work in good faith with your Administration to meet the health, economic, and societal challenges of the COVID crisis,” the GOP senators write in a letter dated Sunday.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, seen here at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, is leading a group of Republican senators who have written to President Biden with a request to detail a COVID-19 rescue counterproposal.
CREDIT: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Republicans have balked at the price tag of Biden’s $1.9 trillion package, especially coming weeks after then-President Donald Trump signed a $900 billion relief measure into law. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who also signed the letter, told Fox News Sunday that the counterproposal would cost about $600 billion.

That 10 Republicans signed on is notable because that’s the number that would be needed to combine with Senate Democrats’ 50-person caucus to reach the 60-vote, filibuster-proof threshold to pass legislation under regular Senate rules.

In a statement Sunday night, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden “spoke to Senator Collins, and invited her and other signers of the letter to come to the White House early this week for a full exchange of views.”

“We’re certainly open to input from anywhere where we can find a constructive idea to make this package as effective as possible, but the president is uncompromising when it comes to the speed that we need to act at to address this crisis,” Brian Deese, Biden’s top economic adviser, told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.

On Friday, Biden himself told reporters at the White House: “I support passing COVID relief with support from Republicans if we can get it. But the COVID relief has to pass.”

In the letter Sunday, the senators note that earlier COVID-19 relief packages passed with bipartisan support and that their proposal includes some elements similar to those in Biden’s plan, including allocating $160 billion for vaccine development and distribution, testing and tracing, and personal protective equipment.

“Our proposal also includes economic relief for those Americans with the greatest need, providing more targeted assistance than in the Administration’s plan,” the letter reads. “We propose an additional round of economic impact payments for those families who need assistance the most, including their dependent children and adults.”

The lawmakers say their plan also includes extending enhanced federal unemployment benefits and deploying additional resources to help small businesses.

Notably, the letter does not mention state and local aid, which was a key sticking point in past rounds of relief negotiations. Biden’s package includes $350 billion in emergency funding for state and local governments.

The letter was also signed by Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Todd Young of Indiana, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Mitt Romney of Utah and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.

Democrats prepare for budget reconciliation

The GOP senators plan to detail their counterproposal on Monday, the same day House Democrats are expected to introduce a budget resolution that will lay the groundwork for going through a reconciliation process.

“By the end of the week, we will be finished with the budget resolution, which will be about reconciliation, if needed,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters last week. “I hope we don’t need it. But if we need it, we will have it.”

Separately, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said on Thursday that Democrats’ “preference” is for the relief efforts to be bipartisan.

“But if our Republican colleagues decide to oppose this urgent and necessary legislation,” Schumer said, “we will have to move forward without them.”

He added “we must not repeat the same mistake” of 12 years ago when Democrats agreed to a stimulus many considered too small in order to gain Republican support.

“The dangers of undershooting our response are far greater than overshooting it,” Schumer said. “We should have learned the lesson, from 2008 and 2009, when Congress was too timid and constrained in its response to the global financial crisis and it took years — years — for the economy to get out of recession.”

With the thinnest possible majority in the Senate, Democrats have essentially two options to try to pass Biden’s coronavirus relief package without bipartisan support.

The first would be to kill the legislative filibuster, but at least two Democratic senators have pledged to oppose such a move to blow up the rules of the upper chamber.

The second option for Democrats is to use reconciliation, a process that has been used for the Affordable Care Act and the GOP tax cuts Trump signed into law. The process can be lengthy — and complicated — but would allow Senate Democrats to pass legislation with a simple majority vote without eliminating the filibuster.

But Senate Republicans have warned that using this process to avoid needing to garner their votes could be damaging.

Sen. Portman, who signed the letter to the White House, recently cautioned the Biden administration and congressional Democrats against moving forward on the new round of relief legislation without GOP support, saying doing so “poisons the well.”

“My hope is that we won’t go down this path of trying to circumvent the supermajority and just jam something through,” Portman told NPR’s Susan Davis. “I think that would set the tone for the administration that would be really problematic for the country and, frankly, bad for the Biden administration.”

NPR’s Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.