More stimulus coming: President-elect Biden lays out immediate plans for additional COVID relief

The President-elect wants bipartisan support for his COVID relief plan and is expected to pass the first proposal through "regular order," which would require 60 votes in the Senate.  For the second proposal, a much-larger stimulus package which will focus on infrastructure, Biden will use a procedural process known as "budget reconciliation," requiring a simple majority vote in a very polarized Congress with very slim margins.  If Democrats are unable to get Republican support on the coronavirus relief, they will likely resort to using reconciliation for passage of both proposals. Regardless of the actual path, we see both pieces of Biden’s stimulus being enacted in 2021 now that Democrats control both chambers of Congress and the White House. 

The American Rescue Plan includes:

Public Health Funding

• US$20 billion in a national vaccination program.
• US$50 billion to expand testing, lab capacity, and support schools and local governments implement testing protocols.
• Fund the hiring of 100,000 more public health workers.
• Address health disparities by ensuring equitable vaccine and supplies distribution.
• Provide funding for states to deploy teams to conduct infection control oversight for long-term care facilities experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks.
• Provide funding for COVID-19 mitigation, re-entry, and vaccination strategies for federal, state, and local jails and detention centers. 
• Provide funding to increase identification and response to emerging strains of COVID-19.
• Provide US$30 billion into the Disaster Relief Fund to bolster critical supplies and emergency relief  to states, local governments, and Tribes, including deployment of the National Guard.
• US$10 billion investment in expanding domestic manufacturing for pandemic supplies through the Defense Production Act.
• Fund the development, manufacturing and purchase of therapies and treatments for COVID-19.

Liability Protections

• Congressional authorization for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue a COVID-19 Protection Standard to broader set of workers while calling on Congress to provide additional funding for OSHA enforcement and grant funding.

International Response

• Provide US$11 billion to support the international health and humanitarian response. 

Education Funding

• Provide US$130 billion to help K-12 schools address disruptions caused by the pandemic.
• US$35 billion for higher education for at public colleges and universities as well as private historically Black colleges and other minority-serving institutions.
• US$5 billion allocated to be distributed at the discretion of governors for educational needs in their state as a result of the pandemic. 

Emergency Paid Leave

• Provide paid leave and eliminate exemptions for employers with more than 500 and less than 50 employees. Close loopholes in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act by clarifying that healthcare workers and first responders qualify for paid leave benefits.
• Provide fourteen weeks of paid family and medical leave for caregivers when schools or care centers are closed or caring for people with COVID-19 symptoms, or those quarantining due to exposure.
• Expand emergency leave to federal workers. 
• Provide a maximum paid leave benefit of US$1,400 per-week for eligible workers, delivering full wage replacement to workers earning up to $73,000 annually.
• Reimburse employers with less than 500 employees for the cost of this leave.
• Reimburse state and local government for the cost of this leave.
• Extend emergency paid leave measures until September 30, 2021.

Direct Relief to Individuals

• Provide US$1,400 stimulus checks to individuals in addition to the US$600 checks passed in the omnibus stimulus relief passed in December, bringing the total direct relief payment to US$2,000.

Unemployment Insurance (UI)

• Extends and expands unemployment insurance benefits to US$400 per week through September 2021.
• Extend financial assistance for self-employed workers who do not typically qualify for unemployment compensation benefits.
• Fully fund states' short-time compensation programs and additional weeks of benefits.

Housing Aid

• Extend the eviction moratorium through September 30, 2021.
• Increase housing aid $25 billion in rental assistance
• Provide $5 billion to cover home energy and water costs in arrears, through programs including the Low Income Home Emergency Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
• Provide US$5 billion in emergency assistance to help secure housing for people experiencing homelessness.

Food and Nutrition Assistance

• Extend the 15 percent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit increase.
• Invest $3 billion Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
• Partner with restaurants to feed American families and keep restaurant workers on the job using the FEMA Empowering Essential Deliveries (FEED) Act.
• Temporarily cut the state matching to make a one-time emergency infusion of SNAP.
• Provide U.S. Territories with $1 billion in additional nutrition assistance for their residents.

Workers Pay

• Raise the minimum wage to US$15 per hour and ends the tipped minimum wage and sub-minimum wage for people with disabilities.  
• Calls on employers to provide hazard pay to frontline essential workers.

Child Care

• Create a $25 billion emergency stabilization fund to help hard-hit child care providers.  
• Expand child care assistance with US$15 billion in funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant program.
• For one year, provide a refundable tax credit for families for as much as half of their spending on child care for children under age 13, so that they can receive a total of up to US$4,000 for one child or US$8,000 for two or more children. The full 50 percent reimbursement will be available to families making less than US$125,000 a year. And, all families making between US$125,000 and US$400,000 will receive a partial credit .
• Temporarily expand the Child Tax Credit to US$3,000 per child (US$3,600 for a child under age 6) and makes 17 year-olds eligible for the year.
• Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit by increasing the maximum credit for childless adults from roughly US$530 to close to US$1,500, raise the income limit for the credit from about US$16,000 to about US$21,000, and expand the age range that is eligible including by eliminating the age cap for older workers and expanding eligibility for younger workers.  

Family Assistance

• Provide US$1 billion for states to cover the additional cash assistance that Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) recipients needed as a result of the pandemic crisis.

Health Care

• Preserve and expand health coverage by subsidizing continuation health coverage (COBRA) through the end of September. Expands and increases the value of the Premium Tax Credit to lower or eliminate health insurance premiums.  
• Expand access to behavioral health services by providing US$4 billion to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Health Resources and Services Administration to expand access to behavioral heal.
• Provide US$20 billion for veteran’s health. 
• Provide at least US$800 million in supplemental funding for key federal programs that protect survivors of gender-based violence.

Small Business

• Provide US$15 billion in flexible, equitably distributed grants to more than 1 million small businesses.  
• Leverage US$35 billion in government funds into US$175 billion in low-interest loans and venture capital. 
• Prompt Congress to support restaurants, bars, and other businesses that have suffered disproportionately, including through the Community Credit Corporation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

State, Local, and Tribal Funding

• Provides US$350 billion in emergency funding for state, local, and territorial governments. 
  • US$3 billion of this funding would be  allocated to Economic Development Administration (EDA) grants.
• Provide US$20 billion for the hardest hit public transit agencies.
• Provide US$20 billion in tribal governance in response to the pandemic.

Information Technology and Cybersecurity

• Provide US$9 billion to expand and improve the Technology Modernization Fund to improve ageing computer systems that are targets for hackers.  
• Provide US$200 million to the Information Technology Oversight and Reform Fund for the rapid hiring of experts to support the federal Chief Information Security Officer and U.S. Digital Service.
• Invest US$300 million in no-year funding for the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Technology Transformation Services to assist it to drive secure IT projects forward without the need of reimbursement from agencies.
• An additional US$690M for CISA to bolster cybersecurity across federal civilian networks, and test out the new shared security and cloud computing services.

Authored by Ivan Zapien, Shelley Castle and Kolo Rathurn