The American Rescue Plan addresses a crisis that America has ignored for too long: Our childhood poverty rate is among the highest of any major country on Earth. Yes, we are finally going to provide real help for the children of America. https://t.co/q7fYDINnmI

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 9, 2021

https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-minimum-wage-cnn-anderson-cooper-pass-bill-1574720

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has said that he would not back down in his quest to raise the federal minimum wage despite legislative setbacks in the Senate.

Sanders, who chairs the Senate budget committee, is broadly happy with the $1.9 trillion stimulus package agreed on Saturday, telling CNN it was “the most significant legislation for working people that has been passed in decades.”

However, Sanders and other progressives had been unable to include in it a provision to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The Senate parliamentarian ruled that it could not be part of budget reconciliation, in which the legislation would only need a straight majority.

Then, Sanders’ last ditch-effort to add it to the American Rescue Plan was rejected 58-42 by the upper house last week, with seven Democrats and one independent siding with Republicans in quashing the measure.

But Sanders has said he was not prepared to wave the white flag just yet, and when asked by anchor Anderson Cooper what he would do next to increase the minimum wage, he insisted that it is still “absolutely on my agenda.”

“We are developing a strategy and if anyone thinks that the vote that we had the other day on the minimum wage is the last vote that is taking place this session, they are very, very wrong. We are going to pass that bill,” he said.

“At the end of the day, the American people want it. Overwhelmingly large numbers of people support raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour.”

“We are going to do what the American people want, and in one way or another we are going to pass the $15 an hour minimum wage,” he added, without specifying what his next step would be.

Tax Policy Center analysis of where the benefits go under the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act versus the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Two bills passed on party-line votes.

Very different outcomes.https://t.co/NQb0rRPekY pic.twitter.com/J1hpA57p54

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) March 9, 2021

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/542197-frustrated-progressives-on-relief-pacakge-well-take-the-win

Liberals in the House on Monday rallied behind the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that the Democratic-controlled Congress is set to send to President Biden’s desk this week, despite some frustration over changes made by the Senate to appease key centrists.

House progressives signaled that they will still back the legislation following amendments adopted by the Senate to restrict income eligibility for stimulus checks and keep weekly unemployment insurance payments at $300, while ensuring that the first $10,200 of jobless benefits aren’t subject to taxes.

Another key progressive provision in the original version of the bill that the House passed earlier this month would have raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled that it didn’t comply with the budget reconciliation process that Democrats are using to circumvent a Senate GOP filibuster.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Monday that she didn’t think the changes pursued by Senate centrists were “good policy or good politics,” but minimized them as “relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.”

“Ultimately, given the makeup of the Senate, the House is always going to be more progressive than the Senate. That is actually our job, to make everything as progressive as possible in the House and then when it goes to the Senate to know that there are going to be some changes,” Jayapal told reporters in the Capitol.

“We take the win. We believe it’s our work that made it as progressive as it is,” she added.

Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) acknowledged “a lot of frustration” about the minimum wage hike’s removal from the bill, but predicted that “every Democrat, most likely” will vote for it.

“Overall, no one wants to play games with people’s lives. People are suffering. And the fact this is going to get checks and money directly into the pockets of people, and cut child poverty, cut poverty, I think is going to be the overriding concern,” Khanna said on CNN’s “New Day.”

Ryan Cooper

https://theweek.com/articles/970841/how-democrats-learned-stop-worrying-hand-fat-stacks-cash

For those who remember what this point in 2009 was like, all this is very confusing. Democrats back then had gigantic majorities in both the House and the Senate, plus an extremely popular new president — but they cheaped out on their response to the financial crisis. Today, the party has a tiny 5-vote margin in the House, controls the Senate only by virtue of Vice President Harris’ tie-breaking vote, and elected a famously moderate old white guy as president.

Yet despite having literally zero margin for error, the ARP is more than twice as big as the 2009 Recovery Act, and structured far more generously. Effectively, Democrats are betting that blasting trainloads of money down the income ladder will pay off both economically and politically. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it seems Democrats … learned from their mistakes?

Now, I could complain about a lot of this. The CTC expansion is structured in a goofy, incoherent fashion and lasts only one year (though that does give Democrats a chance to do it right if they make it permanent, which they are planning to do). The checks walkback was politically stupid. Excluding an increase in the minimum wage to $15 per hour was bad, and seeing so many Senate Democrats vote against it was worse. Boosting the EITC for seniors makes no sense; Social Security should have been boosted instead.

But all that said, it’s a hugely ambitious bill — just by itself putting Biden in league with Lyndon Johnson as a poverty fighter. All the various provisions will cut overall poverty by a third, and child poverty in half, according to one estimate. It remains to be seen whether Democrats can make these programs (above all the child benefit) permanent, but unlike Obama, Biden will surely be remembered as a president who at least attempted to be transformative.

Meanwhile, the boost to child benefits builds on an argument that has been developing for years among liberal and leftist scholars. Instead of conditioning family support on work — the thinking behind the EITC and welfare reform back in 1996 — the state should simply establish an income floor for families, as is done in many European countries with much lower poverty, less social dysfunction, and a greater fraction of the workforce employed. That naturally fits in perfectly with the desire to greatly boost the purchasing power of the poor and working class.

In 2009, so-called moderates took a stimulus that was already half the size it needed to be, and lopped off another $100 billion for no reason. Despite some theatrics during the Senate vote, that did not happen this time. The reason, apparently, is that Democrats have grasped that it was not cautious or small-c conservative to leave the economy un-fixed a decade ago. For the moment at least, they are going to try the novel strategy of trying to improve the lives of the American people, and hope they get rewarded at the ballot box. Progress!