WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden has agreed to meet a group of 10 Republican senators who have proposed spending about one-third of the $1.9 trillion he is seeking in coronavirus aid, though congressional Democrats are poised to move ahead without Republican support.
Sunday's invitation to the White House came hours after the lawmakers sent Biden a letter urging him to negotiate rather than try to ram through a relief package solely on Democratic votes. The House and Senate are on track to vote as soon as this week on a budget resolution, which would lay the groundwork for passing an aid package under rules requiring only a simple-majority vote in the Senate.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that Biden had spoken with the leader of the group, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. Though Biden is wanting "a full exchange of views," Psaki reiterated that he remains in favor of moving forward with a far-reaching relief package. A meeting could come in a matter of days.
Winning the support of 10 Republicans would be significant for Biden in the 50-50 Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris has the tie-breaking vote. If all Democrats were to back a compromise bill, then the legislation would reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to overcome potential blocking efforts and gain approval under regular Senate procedures.
"In the spirit of bipartisanship and unity, we have developed a covid-19 relief framework that builds on prior covid assistance laws, all of which passed with bipartisan support," the Republican senators wrote. "Our proposal reflects many of your stated priorities, and with your support, we believe that this plan could be approved quickly by Congress with bipartisan support."
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The plea for Biden to give bipartisan negotiations more time comes as the president has shown signs of impatience and as the more liberal wing of his party considers passing the relief package through a process known as budget reconciliation. That would allow the bill to advance with only the backing of the Democratic majority.
Democratic aides said the GOP proposal would not change their plans to move forward with the budget bill this week, setting the stage for party-line passage of Biden's plan.
"The key to getting robust job opportunities is to cease any delay, any inaction, any wait-and-see around this rescue plan," Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on "Fox News Sunday."
"The American people could not care less about budget process. ... They need relief, and they need it now," Bernstein said.
Biden's plan would send payments to individuals with incomes up to $75,000 per year and couples making up to $150,000.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, one of the signers of the letter, said the GOP plan would lower those thresholds to $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for couples. Instead of $1,400 checks, the GOP plan would propose $1,000 checks, according to Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., another member of the group.
The GOP plan would also reduce Biden's proposal for extending emergency federal unemployment benefits, which are set at $300 a week and will expire in mid-March. The Biden plan would increase those benefits to $400 weekly and extend them through September. The GOP plan would keep the payments at $300 per week and extend them through June, according to three people with knowledge of the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of an official announcement.
Portman criticized Democrats for their plans to go it alone, saying this approach would "jam Republicans and really jam the country."
"If you can't find bipartisan compromise on covid-19, I don't know where you can find it," Portman said on CNN's "State of the Union."
The signers of the letter include eight Republican senators who are part of a bipartisan group that has conferred with Biden administration officials about the relief bill. In addition to Collins, Portman and Cassidy, these are Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Todd Young of Indiana, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Jerry Moran of Kansas. Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., also signed the letter.
Brian Deese, the top White House economic adviser who is leading the administration's outreach to Congress, said administration officials were reviewing the letter.
But Cedric Richmond, a senior Biden adviser, said the president "is very willing to meet with anyone to advance the agenda." When asked about the senators' plan, Richmond said, "This is about seriousness of purpose."
Deese indicated the White House could be open to negotiating on further limiting who would receive stimulus checks. Under the Biden plan, families with incomes up to $300,000 could receive some stimulus money.
"That is certainly a place that we're willing to sit down and think about, 'Are there ways to make the entire package more effective?'" Deese said on "State of the Union."
TALK OF UNITY
As a candidate, Biden predicted his decades in the Senate and his eight years as Barack Obama's vice president would give him credibility as a deal-maker and would help him bring Republicans and Democrats to consensus on the most important matters facing the country.
But less than two weeks into his presidency, Biden showed frustration with the pace of negotiations at a time when the economy exhibited further evidence of wear from the pandemic. Last week, 847,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits, a sign that layoffs remain high as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage.
"I support passing covid relief with support from Republicans if we can get it. But the covid relief has to pass -- no ifs, ands or buts," Biden said Friday.
In the letter, the Republican lawmakers reminded Biden that in his inaugural address, he proclaimed that the challenges facing the nation require "the most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity."
Cassidy separately criticized the current Biden plan as "chock-full of handouts and payoffs to Democratic constituency groups."
"You want the patina of bipartisanship ... so that's not unity," Cassidy said on "Fox News Sunday."
Cassidy strongly criticized Biden for not soliciting broader input from senators in both parties. The senator said the Republican package amounts to $600 billion and is "targeted to the needs of the American people."
"The president's team did not reach out to anybody in our group, either Democrat or Republican, when they fashioned their proposal," Cassidy said. "They've never reached out to us -- that's the beginning of the bad faith."
Cassidy also said Biden's push to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour would cost millions of jobs.
DEMOCRATS PUSH BACK
Democrats bristled at Republican accusations that Biden's relief proposal would give too much in federal aid to affluent Americans, pointing to GOP support for the 2017 tax law that nonpartisan analysts said cut taxes substantially for the wealthiest Americans.
"Reasonable people can have honorable differences on the precise income limits of emergency tax relief. But there's a degree of hutzpah in the GOP suddenly on their high horse on this point when they were just fine with permanently giving people who make over $5 million more tax relief than the bottom 60% of American taxpayers combined," said Gene Sperling, an economist who advised the Biden presidential campaign and served as director of the White House National Economic Council in the Clinton and Obama administrations.
The $900 billion relief bill Congress passed in December included $600 stimulus payments to individuals. Biden's plan to issue a new round of $1,400 checks would bring that figure to $2,000 -- making good on promises he and other Democrats made that helped the party win two Senate seats in Georgia in early January. Those victories gave Democrats the majority in the Senate, and Democrats including the two new senators from Georgia have insisted they must make good on those promises.
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"The entire Democratic Party came together behind the candidates in Georgia -- we made promises to the American people," Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on ABC. "If politics means anything -- if you're going to have any degree of credibility -- you can't campaign on a series of issues ... and then change your mind. That's not how it works. We made promises to the American people; we're going to keep those promises."
In addition to a new round of checks, money for the national vaccination plan, a higher minimum wage and increased unemployment benefits, Biden's plan includes rental assistance and eviction forbearance, an increased child tax credit, some $130 billion to help schools reopen and hundreds of billions of dollars for cities and states.
Money for vaccinations -- which Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said recently was key to helping the economy -- has emerged as the one real area of bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill.
"With your support, we believe Congress can once again craft a relief package that will provide meaningful, effective assistance to the American people and set us on a path to recovery," the GOP senators wrote.
Information for this article was contributed by Aamer Madhani of The Associated Press and by Erica Werner, Jeff Stein and Seung Min Kim of The Washington Post.
