President Biden and Congressional Democrats met the tight deadline of passing the massive $1.9T relief package by March 14 when the current federal unemployment benefits expire. The federal supplemental payments will stay in place until September 6 and remain at $300 a week. This of course is just a small part of the package that includes $1,400 stimulus checks, money for state and local governments, vaccine programs, child credits and much more. In the coming weeks the President, First Lady, Vice President and Second Gentleman will all be hitting the road selling the President’s relief package.

In order to avoid the unemployment cliff and prevent a Republican filibuster, Democrats used the Budget Reconciliation process. Democrats will have the opportunity to use Reconciliation again later in the year but have not yet determined what items would be included in the next budget package. The Biden Administration has not submitted its FY 2022 budget request on which the Budget Bill will be based and it will likely not be submitted until April.

Democrats have a growing list of priorities including infrastructure that includes clean energy proposals, lowering the price of prescription drugs, immigration overhaul, and increasing the minimum wage. Democrats have already started talking to Republicans in search of a possible bipartisan bill on the topics of infrastructure and minimum wage. In the past both of these issues have received bipartisan support. From the debate on the COVID bill it is clear that minimum wage won’t be part of the next Budget Reconciliation Bill; therefore, a bipartisan “regular order” proposal will need to be drafted. It was largely overlooked but when Senator Sanders offered his amendment to overrule the Senate Parliamentarian and put the minimum wage increase back in the COVID Relief Bill, eight Democratic Senators voted against the Sanders amendment demonstrating that Democratic opposition to $15 an hour runs deeper than just Senator Manchin.

There is also a lot of Republican support for infrastructure; it became an inside joke in DC that every week was going to be Infrastructure Week during the Trump Administration. A potential roadblock to bipartisanship on infrastructure may be the Democratic desire to tie climate change and clean energy projects to a traditional bridges and roads infrastructure bill. However, wind and solar energy are growing in red states, and other ideas such as building thousands of electric car charging stations is gaining support across the political spectrum. The issue of a bipartisan infrastructure bill may boil down to whether or not Republicans believe any Democratic success is a step backwards from their goal of recapturing the House and Senate in 2022.

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