Rafiq Maqbool/AP Photo
First100-012121
More money could lead to more vaccine production, as well as more check production, though not with the same machine.
It’s January 21, 2021 and welcome to First 100.
The Chief
The first bill that President Biden introduced, even before taking office, was a $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which really picks up most of the leftover elements on pandemic relief that Democrats were unable to advance in the CARES Act and the December COVID relief bill. Two things stood out in the bill: the topping up of $600 checks in December to $2,000 and funding to get the vaccine produced and distributed.
Those two pieces both probably have enough bipartisan support to pass, even in the Senate with 60 votes. The checks are incredibly popular and Republicans would be playing with fire to hold them up, especially if they know they can be dumped into a majority-vote budget reconciliation bill anyway (in other words, they’d have taken a bad vote for nothing). And there’s literally no amount of vaccine money that would not pay itself back and then some, by leading to reopening the country in full faster.
So there’s an argument being made, within the House especially, to just pass those two elements—what I’m calling “checks and shots”—under regular order, and deal with the rest of the American Rescue Plan later. This has a couple different benefits. First, Biden would get an early, bipartisan legislative win, creating momentum for his presidency. That’s probably the most minor benefit, since “momentum” really isn’t a thing.
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More important, a bill under regular order would get checks and shots out quick. Reconciliation takes time, and apparently the House is staying out of session next week. A full bill through reconciliation will run up against the extended unemployment deadline in March. By contrast you could put a checks and shots bill on the floor almost immediately.
Checks will circulate through the economy: the current $600 iteration is already boosting restaurants. With unemployment still high, any amount that can help people needs to get there right away. And vaccine money is vital. I know the private sector—God help us—wants to take over the rollout, but keep in mind that the most failed part of distribution right now is the Walgreens/CVS effort to vaccinate nursing homes. Who distributes the vaccine is less important than if they are funded for the effort in a coordinated way, with a Public Health Jobs Corps of 100,000 strong and a central government standing up mobile clinics and all the rest. And since we’re in a race with the more transmissible variant, time is of the essence.
Third, as I’ve stressed, this is a trust-building exercise. Democrats ran and won in Georgia on checks. The Biden presidency is going to rise or fall on the vaccine rollout. Getting those priorities covered will show the public that promises can be kept. I know there’s a lot of Twitter grousing about $2,000 checks versus $1,400. I think Congress is likely to go with $1,400 but a standalone bill that isn’t risking the rest of the package is also more fertile ground to advocate for bigger checks.
Punchbowl, which has reported a little on this, describes this as a “nibble” or a “big bite.” But checks and shots are actually a significant portion of the American Rescue Plan. The estimate for $1,400 checks, especially ones that include adult dependents as the Biden bill does, is anywhere between $435 and $465 billion. Add $600 to that and it’s another $200 billion. And “shots,” defined as a national vaccination program, is $160 billion. If you include the Public Health Jobs Corps and scaled-up testing to open schools and investing in COVID treatments, you’re scraping $400 billion, which is what the Biden fact sheet puts toward “critical measures for addressing COVID-19.” So this “skinny” bill is anywhere between $595 billion and $1.07 trillion. Not very skinny! You could see it becoming comparable to the $900 billion relief bill passed a month ago.
My sources in the Senate describe checks and shots as an option but also a gamble. There’s the idea that the popular items can drive Congress to pass a bigger deal, and without them, a bigger deal might get stranded. But this assumes that there’s any Republican support for a bigger deal, which there isn’t. What passes for moderates, like Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney, are already rejecting it. If you’re going to pass the big bill, it’s going to be with 50 votes. And at least for Joe Manchin, taking checks out of that big bill helps its passage, by making it more targeted.
If you can get checks and shots, put points on the board, and still leave a reconciliation bill available for a broader relief package, you do it. Bottom line.
I Think You Should Leave
Back in November, the Revolving Door Project put out a great report about what positions in the government could be vacated on Day One. We knew even then that the Trump team was making an effort to burrow loyalists inside the federal government. But many officials serve at the pleasure of the president, and can be fired by the president as well.
President Biden went ahead and asked for the resignations of three of these officials yesterday: Michael Pack of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (parent of Voice of America), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director Kathy Kraninger, and National Labor Relations Board general counsel Peter Robb. Kraninger, who had been busy discounting financial industry offenders on their crimes, would have been able to serve until December 2023 but for a Supreme Court ruling allowing the president to fire the CFPB director. (Thanks Supreme Court!) She and Pack went quietly.
Robb did not. General counsel is an important position, as it prioritizes cases for the board and directs staff attorneys to the same. And Robb is vociferously anti-union; he was even involved in the firing of air traffic controllers in the 80s.
Minutes after Robb refused to quit, Biden fired him. He didn’t take a meeting or worry about how it would play on Fox News. He just took action. This is a sea change from past Democratic administrations consumed with optics. Biden hasn’t done everything I’ve wanted in this transition, and I would never expect him to. But he understands at least to some degree the power of the job. This is tracking well above the level of Obama.
What Day of Biden’s Presidency Is It?
Day 2. I’ll have more on the Day One executive orders tomorrow, though here’s a generic rundown and here’s a fact sheet. There are more coming today around COVID response. Again, more tomorrow.
One of the less heralded executive orders from yesterday is a plan to recalculate the social cost of carbon, which is important for regulatory purposes. It was actually part of our Day One Agenda, in this piece from Steve Novick. So put one on the board!
COVID Report
Sometimes the links section for First 100 will just be about the pandemic. So here goes. Inauguration Day coincided with the highest death toll of the crisis. (COVID Tracking) We’re up to 17.2 million vaccination doses distributed. (Bloomberg) An outbreak at Los Angeles/Long Beach ports could damage logistics across the economy. (L.A. Times) A study in Israel shows that you really need two doses (The Guardian) of the Pfizer vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine is effective against the COVID variant (CNBC), though maybe not for the South Africa variant. (New York Times) The vaccination goal just has to be bigger than 100 million in 100 days. (HuffPost) Biden’s team is worried about the surge (Bloomberg), and it’s refreshing to have an administration that’s actually concerned about whether people live or die.
