Category: On the Hill

After a floor debate that lasted into early Saturday morning Eastern Time, the House passed H.R. 1319, the Biden Administration’s initial COVID relief bill.  In the end, the vote was 219 – 212, with two Democrats joining all Republicans in opposing the package.

The legislation now heads to the Senate, where the minimum wage provisions will need to be stricken due to a ruling from the Senate Parliamentarian.  Other provisions may change along the way as well.

The goal of the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats is to get a bill signed into law by by March 14, when the enhanced unemployment insurance payments are scheduled to end.

Read more about the vote and the bill here, here, and here.

Later this afternoon, the House is scheduled to take up H. R. 1319, the budget reconciliation bill that serves as the Biden Administration’s COVID relief package.  Among the provisions of greatest interest to the higher education and research community are the allocation of nearly $40 billion for higher education as well as $600 million for NSF.  The funds for NSF were added at the last minute to the bill as it was being considered by the House Rules Committee.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Capitol complex yesterday, Senate Democrats were busy making arguments to the Senate Parliamentarian about why various parts of the package that some considered extraneous to the immediate relief efforts should remain it it when the House-adopted measure reaches their side of the Hill.  The Senate is bound by a set of arcane rules and procedures known as the “Byrd Rule”– named after the late-Sen. Robert Byrd (D) of West Virginia– which, in effect, states that all provisions must be directly relevant to the reconciliation bill and cannot be tangential to the issue at hand.  A huge point of opposition in the House bill for all Senate Republicans and at least two Senate Democrats is the $15-an-hour minimum wage provision.  Last evening, the Senate Parliamentarian, whose job is to rule on procedural and process matters, ruled that the minimum wage section was not germane and that it needs to come out when the bill reaches the Senate.  There were questions going to the drafting of the bill as to whether an increase in the federal minimum wage would survive a Byrd Rule challenge.

While it is possible for the Parliamentarian to be over-ruled, it appears that President Biden, who spent six terms in the Senate, is reluctant to pursue that course of action at this point.  This likely means that the Senate would need to take up a bill that is different from the House-passed package, forcing that newer version to go back to the House.  We continue to track the activities around the reconciliation package.

Read more about the developments here, here, and here.