Pelosi, Nancy

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U.S. Debt Default Could Come in October, Yellen Warns

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WASHINGTON — The United States could default on its debt sometime in October if Congress does not take action to raise or suspend the debt limit, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned on Wednesday.The “extraordinary measures” that the Treasury Department has been employing to finance the government on a temporary basis since Aug. 1 will be exhausted next month, Ms. Yellen said in a letter to lawmakers. She added that the exact timing remained unclear but that time to avert an economic catastrophe was running out.“Once all available measures and cash on hand are fully exhausted, the United States of America would be unable to meet its obligations for the first time in our history,” Ms. Yellen wrote.To delay a default, Treasury has in the last month suspended investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund and the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan.The distribution of pandemic relief payments this year and uncertainty over incoming tax payments this month have made it more challenging than usual to predict when funds will run out. Ms. Yellen said that a default would cause “irreparable harm” to the U.S. economy and to global financial markets and that even coming close to defaulting could be harmful.“We have learned from past debt limit impasses that waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States,” she wrote.Democratic leaders have been insisting for months that Republicans join them in raising the debt ceiling, saying the government hit its last debt limit because of the spending and tax cutting of the Trump administration, what Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California on Wednesday called “the Trump credit card.”But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has been just as emphatic that he will keep Senate Republicans from helping Democrats on the issue. Democrats may try to attach the increase to measures such as an emergency spending bill to pay for relief and reconstruction after Hurricane Ida, wildfires and heat waves from the summer — daring senators from Louisiana and Western states to vote no.The showdown has again put the parties into a game of chicken, with a debt default and potential economic crisis as the consequence.Ms. Pelosi, at her weekly news conference on Wednesday, said emphatically that Democrats would not include a statutory increase in the government’s borrowing authority in a budget bill being drafted this month. That bill, under complicated budget rules, could pass without Republican votes in the Senate.Instead, Democratic leaders will dare Senate Republicans to filibuster a bill that does raise the debt ceiling.“We Democrats supported lifting the debt ceiling” during the Trump administration, she said, “because it was the responsible thing to do.” She added, “I would hope that the Republicans would act in a similarly responsible way.”Democrats have several options they are considering. The government will run out of operating funds at the end of the month, so a debt ceiling increase could be attached to a stopgap spending measure — meaning a Republican filibuster would not only jeopardize the government’s full faith and credit, it could shut down the government.Democrats could also attach it to a major infrastructure bill that passed the Senate with bipartisan support and is supposed to get a House vote by Sept. 27. More

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    Pelosi and Yellen to Discuss Rental Assistance as Eviction Crisis Looms

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    WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday imposed a new, 60-day federal moratorium on evictions in areas of the country ravaged by the Delta variant, a move aimed at protecting hundreds of thousands of renters at risk of being kicked out of their homes during a pandemic.The action was also intended to quell a rebellion among angry Democrats who blamed the White House for allowing a previous eviction ban to expire on Saturday — after the Democratic-controlled House was unable to muster enough votes to extend that moratorium.President Biden told reporters that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would seek to implement a new federal moratorium on evictions in communities across the country hardest hit by the virus.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesPresident Biden has been under intense pressure from activists and allies for the last week to protect people at risk of being driven from their homes for failing to pay their rent during the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic. The previous nationwide moratorium on evictions, which went into effect in September, expired on Saturday after the Supreme Court warned that an extension would require congressional action.The end of the rental protections has prompted a flurry of recriminations in Washington and a furious effort by the White House to find a solution that prevents working-class and impoverished Americans from being evicted from their homes on Mr. Biden’s watch as billions in aid allocated by Congress goes untapped.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Tuesday announced the new order barring people from being driven out of their homes in many parts of the country, saying that “the evictions of tenants for failure to make rent or housing payments could be detrimental to public health control measures” aimed at slowing Covid-19.The order will expire on Oct. 3, the C.D.C. said, and applies to areas of the country “experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission” of the virus. Mr. Biden, in remarks ahead of the official order, said the moratorium was expected to reach 90 percent of Americans who are renters.“This moratorium is the right thing to do to keep people in their homes and out of congregate settings where Covid-19 spreads,” Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the C.D.C., said in a statement. “Such mass evictions and the attendant public health consequences would be very difficult to reverse.”The decision to impose a new and targeted moratorium, rather than extending the previous national ban, is aimed at sidestepping a Supreme Court ruling from late June that seemed to limit the administration’s ability to enact such policies. While the court upheld the C.D.C.’s moratorium, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh issued a brief concurring opinion explaining that he had cast his vote reluctantly and believed the C.D.C. had “exceeded its existing statutory authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium.”Mr. Biden conceded on Tuesday that the new approach might be struck down by the courts as executive overreach. But he suggested the move could help buy the administration time as it tried to get states to disburse billions of dollars of aid to help renters meet their obligations to landlords.Congress previously allocated $46.5 billion in rental assistance in two coronavirus relief packages, but only about $3 billion had been delivered to eligible households through June, according to Treasury Department data.“Whether that option will pass constitutional measure with this administration, I can’t tell you. I don’t know,” Mr. Biden said of a new moratorium. “There are a few scholars who say it will and others who say it’s not likely to. But at a minimum, by the time it gets litigated, we’ll probably give some additional time while we’re getting that $45 billion out to people who are in fact behind in rent and don’t have the money.”For days, some of Mr. Biden’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, including some of the most progressive Democrats in Congress, have been publicly and privately assailing his lack of action to help renters, accusing the president and his aides of failing to find a replacement for the eviction moratorium until it was too late.Just days before Saturday’s expiration of the ban, Mr. Biden called on Congress to pass legislation to extend it. But with the House about to leave town for a seven-week vacation and Republicans solidly opposed to an extension, progressive Democrats described the White House call as a cynical attempt to shift blame to lawmakers. The administration, for its part, feared that any unilateral move would open the White House to legal challenges that could ultimately erode Mr. Biden’s presidential powers.The expiration presented the president with a thorny choice: Side with the C.D.C. and his own lawyers, who saw an extension as a dangerous step that could limit executive authority during health crises, or heed the demands of his party’s progressive wing to take immediate action to halt what they saw as a preventable housing crisis.Under intense pressure from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats, Mr. Biden’s team opted for an approach that would give them a chance to satisfy both camps, creating a new moratorium, based on a recent rise in infections from the Delta variant, that cited the risks associated with the movement of displaced tenants in areas where the virus is raging.But ultimately it came down to a simpler calculation: Mr. Biden could not ignore the call, led by Black Democrats, to reverse course.“Every single day that we wait, thousands of people are receiving eviction notices, and some of them are being put out on the street,” said Representative Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri, who has been sleeping on the steps of the Capitol since the moratorium expired in a bid to pressure her party’s leadership. “People started sending me pictures of dockets, court dockets, that were all evictions. We cannot continue to sit back. We need this done today.”Ms. Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, were briefed on Tuesday on the C.D.C.’s plan by Dr. Walensky, the agency’s director, and Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, according to a person familiar with the call. Ms. Pelosi hailed the idea of a new eviction moratorium as a victory for many Americans who were struggling because of the pandemic.“Today is a day of extraordinary relief,” she said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of President Biden, the imminent fear of eviction and being put out on the street has been lifted for countless families across America. Help is here!”Yet for two days it was unclear how — or whether — any help would arrive as landlords prepared to turn to housing courts to evict tenants who were behind on their rent.At a White House meeting with Mr. Biden on Friday, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer bluntly informed Mr. Biden they did not have the votes to pass an extension — and pressed him to take whatever action he could using his executive power, according to two Democratic congressional aides briefed on the meeting.On Tuesday, House Democrats summoned Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen to explain what the agency was doing to help struggling renters. In a private call between Democrats and Ms. Yellen, the Treasury secretary insisted that her team was using all available tools to get rental assistance money to states and to help governments distribute those funds to landlords and renters.“I thoroughly agree we need to bring every resource to bear,” Ms. Yellen said, according to a person who was on the call.The White House had been scrambling to figure out exactly what its legal options were for continuing the moratorium. On Monday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Biden had asked the C.D.C. on Sunday to consider extending the moratorium for 30 days, even just to high-risk states, but that the C.D.C. had “been unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium.”A day later, however, the administration appeared ready to barrel through legal challenges and embrace a solution that did just that.The extension is likely to intensify a legal fight with landlord groups that have argued that the eviction ban has saddled them with debt.The National Apartment Association, which filed a lawsuit last week seeking to recoup lost rent, said the moratorium was jeopardizing the viability of the housing market. The group estimates that the apartment industry is shouldering $26.6 billion in debt as a result of the eviction ban.“The government has intruded into private property and constitutional freedoms, and we are proudly fighting to make owners whole and ensure residents’ debt is wiped from their record,” said Robert Pinnegar, the chief executive of the association.Legal experts said it was likely that the administration would face a new wave of lawsuits if the justification and structure of a new moratorium was similar to the one that had been in place.“The only logic by which this could be justified is a logic that would enable them to be able to suppress virtually any activity of any kind that they can claim might spread contagious disease,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University. More

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    As Infrastructure Bill Inches Forth, a Rocky, Slow Path Awaits in the House

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    Progressives have not ruled out reopening the deal that senators are painstakingly putting together, and they do not intend to take it up for months, until after their other priorities are addressed.WASHINGTON — As senators grind through votes this week on a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, discontent about the legislation is building among progressive Democrats, signaling a potentially bitter and prolonged intraparty fight to come over the package in the House.Liberals who have bristled at seeing their top priorities jettisoned from the infrastructure talks as President Biden and Democrats sought an elusive deal with Republicans have warned that they may seek to change the bill substantially when they have the chance. At minimum, House Democrats have made clear that they do not intend to take up the bill until a second, far more expansive package to provide trillions more in spending on health care, education, child care and climate change programs is approved, something not expected until the fall.The result is that, even as senators carefully navigate their sprawling infrastructure compromise toward final passage that could come within days — pausing every few hours to congratulate themselves for finding bipartisan consensus in a time of deep division — the legislation still faces a rocky and potentially slow path beyond the Senate.Democrats hold a slim enough majority in the House that even a few defections could sink legislation, and progressives have been open in recent days about their reluctance to support the infrastructure legislation without an ironclad guarantee that the budget package, expected to cost about $3.5 trillion, will become law.“The Progressive Caucus has had moral clarity, and a clarion call for three months, that we need to deliver the entirety of these two packages together, so that’s going to continue to be our approach,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the group. “While there may be a couple of senators that are saying that they’re going to vote ‘no’ if certain things don’t happen, that is also true of any number of members in the House.”In order to deliver on Mr. Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda, Democratic leaders have remained adamant that they will approve two expansive bills this year, beginning with Senate passage of the $1 trillion bipartisan compromise, which would pour $550 billion in new federal funds into the nation’s aging roads, bridges and highways, and into climate resiliency and broadband expansion programs.The remainder of Mr. Biden’s plans to address climate change, expand health care and provide free education will be stuffed into a budget package that Democrats plan to pass using a maneuver known as reconciliation. That process allows them to bypass a filibuster, meaning that if all 50 of their senators supported the bill, it could be approved over unified Republican opposition.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has said he plans to bring up a budget blueprint that would pave the way for that bill as soon as the infrastructure bill passes — and will not allow senators to leave Washington for their summer break, scheduled to begin on Friday, until both are done.Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has repeatedly said that the House will not take up the bipartisan infrastructure bill until the Senate passes the reconciliation package, which will take weeks to hammer out in order to clear an evenly divided Senate. But some moderate Democrats want to vote on it immediately, sending it quickly to Mr. Biden for his signature.“We should bring this once-in-a-century bipartisan legislation to the floor for a stand-alone vote as quickly as possible,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey and a leader of the centrist Problem Solvers Caucus.Republicans have moved quickly to try to exploit the divisions among Democrats. While more than a dozen Republicans are expected to support the final bipartisan infrastructure bill, they have branded the budget package as a “reckless tax-and-spending spree” that will drive up inflation. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, led a half-dozen Republicans on Wednesday in a barrage of criticism for what he described as “the absolute worst possible thing we could be doing to our country.”Some centrist Democrats, too, have expressed concern about the size of the $3.5 trillion plan being championed by progressives. Most notably, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has said she will not support a reconciliation bill of that size, which would doom the measure in the Senate, where Democrats need every member aligned with them to vote yes. (She has agreed to advance a budget blueprint, a crucial step for the process.)That infuriated liberal Democrats who are primed to wield their influence on the pair of economic bills. They have been emboldened in recent days by a successful campaign led by one of their own, Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, to pressure Mr. Biden into extending an eviction moratorium for renters affected by the pandemic.“Today is important because it marks, I hope, a turning point in the way that this White House views progressives,” Representative Mondaire Jones, Democrat of New York, said at a news conference after the moratorium extension was announced. “We are prepared to leverage our energy and our activism in close coordination with grass-roots activists and people all across this country.”Representative Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri, right, led a successful campaign to pressure President Biden into extending an eviction moratorium for renters affected by the pandemic.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe House set its own marker for infrastructure legislation in early July with the nearly party-line passage of a five-year, $715 billion transportation and drinking water bill. But the White House instead focused on talks with a bipartisan group of senators aimed at finding a compromise that could win enough Republican support to draw 60 votes in the Senate and overcome a filibuster. As part of the resulting deal, Mr. Biden made a number of concessions, accepting less funding for clean energy projects, lead pipe replacement and transit, among other areas.The situation has rankled Representative Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon, the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Mr. DeFazio spent months shepherding the House infrastructure bill, which includes more substantial climate policy and more than 1,400 home-district projects, known as earmarks, from lawmakers in both parties.“The bill in the Senate was written behind closed doors, and you know, that’s probably not going to be the best product,” Mr. DeFazio said on CNN on Monday. “Most of the people who wrote the bill are not senior people on the committees of jurisdiction who know a lot about transportation, or perhaps a number of them are resistant to the idea that we should deal with climate change.”Pressed on whether he would ultimately block passage of the final product, Mr. DeFazio conceded that the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package “could fix a lot of the problems in this bill.”“I’ve had that conversation with the White House — that’s possible,” he said. “So if we see major changes and things that are mitigated by the reconciliation bill, OK, then maybe we could move this.”White House officials said they have remained in touch with House Democrats’ tensions. Mr. Biden has dispatched cabinet officials to meet with several of them, including Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, who traveled to Oregon to laud Mr. DeFazio’s work on infrastructure.“We’re in close touch with the president’s colleagues in the House, who he deeply respects and values as core partners in delivering on generational infrastructure progress,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman. In recent days, the White House has pointedly shared polls and articles that show widespread support for the bipartisan plan and highlight substantial funding for climate resilience.Senate Democrats, for their part, have vowed to remain united as they trudge through a marathon of votes to finish both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the budget blueprint before leaving Washington for their August recess.“We’re moving together as Democrats,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told reporters this week. “No one’s going to get everything they want. But no one’s going to get shut out, either.”Lisa Friedman More

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    Eviction Moratorium Set to Lapse as Biden Aid Effort Falters

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    The administration made a last-ditch, failed appeal to extend the moratorium to buy more time for states to distribute rental aid.A nationwide moratorium on residential evictions is set to expire on Saturday after a last-minute effort by the Biden administration to win an extension failed, putting hundreds of thousands of tenants at risk of losing shelter, while tens of billions in federal funding intended to pay their back rent sit untapped.The expiration was a humbling setback for President Biden, whose team has tried for months to fix a dysfunctional emergency rent relief program to help struggling renters and landlords. Running out of time and desperate to head off a possible wave of evictions, the White House abruptly shifted course on Thursday, throwing responsibility to Congress and prompting a frenzied — and ultimately unsuccessful — rescue operation by Democrats in the House on Friday.The collapse of those efforts reflected the culmination of months of frustration, as the White House pushed hard on states to speed housing assistance to tenants — with mixed results — before the moratorium expired. Hampered by a lack of action by the Trump administration, which left no real plan to carry out the program, Mr. Biden’s team has struggled to build a viable federal-local funding pipeline, hindered by state governments that view the initiative as a burden and the ambivalence of many landlords.As a result, the $47 billion Emergency Rental Assistance program, to date, disbursed only $3 billion — about 7 percent of what was supposed to be a crisis-averting infusion of cash.Adding to the urgency, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh warned last month, when the Supreme Court allowed a one-month extension of the eviction moratorium to stand, that any further extensions would have to go through Congress. But there was little chance that Republicans on Capitol Hill would agree, and by the time White House officials asked, only two days remained before the freeze expired, angering Democratic leaders who said they had no time to build support for the move.“Really, we only learned about this yesterday,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had publicly and privately urged senior Biden administration officials to deal with the problem themselves.“What a devastating failure to act in a moment of crisis,” said Diane Yentel, the president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which had pressed for an extension of the moratorium. “As the Delta variant surges and our understanding of its dangers grow, the White House punts to Congress in the final 48 hours and the House leaves for summer break.”The federal eviction moratorium, put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in November, was effective, reducing by about half the number of eviction cases that normally would have been filed since last fall, according to an analysis of filings by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.Advocates have argued it is also a public health imperative, because evictions make it harder for people to socially distance.The lapse of the federal freeze is offset by other pro-tenant initiatives that are still in place. Many states and localities, including New York and California, have extended their own moratoriums, which should blunt some of the effect. In some places, judges, cognizant of the potential for a mass wave of displacement, have said they would slow-walk cases and make greater use of eviction diversion programs.On Friday, several government agencies, including the Federal Housing Finance Agency, along with the Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs Departments, announced that they would extend their eviction moratoriums until Sept. 30.Nonetheless, there is the potential for a rush of eviction filings beginning next week — in addition to the more than 450,000 eviction cases already filed in courts in the largest cities and states since the pandemic began in March 2020.An estimated 11 million adult renters are considered seriously delinquent on their rent payment, according to a survey by the Census Bureau, but no one knows how many renters are in danger of being evicted in the near future.Bailey Bortolin, a tenants’ lawyer who works for the Nevada Coalition of Legal Service Providers, said the absence of the moratorium would lead many owners to dump their backlog of eviction cases into the courts next week, prompting many renters who received an eviction notice to simply vacate their apartments rather than fight it out.“I think what we will see on Monday is a drastic increase in eviction notices going out to people, and the vast majority won’t go through the court process,” Ms. Bortolin said.The moratorium had been set to expire on June 30, but the White House and C.D.C., under pressure from tenants groups, extended the freeze until July 31, in the hopes of using the time to accelerate the flow of rental assistance.A crash effort followed, led by Gene Sperling, who was appointed in March to oversee Mr. Biden’s pandemic relief efforts, including emergency rental assistance programs created by coronavirus aid laws enacted in 2020 and 2021.Mr. Sperling, working with officials in the Treasury Department, moved to loosen application requirements and increase coordination among the state governments, legal aid lawyers, housing court officials and local nonprofits with expertise in mediating landlord-tenant disputes.In June, 290,000 tenants received $1.5 billion in pandemic relief, according to Treasury Department statistics released last week. To date, about 600,000 tenants have been helped under the program.But administration officials concede the improvements have not progressed quickly enough. Over the past week, Mr. Sperling; Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council; Susan Rice, Mr. Biden’s top domestic policy adviser; and Ms. Rice’s deputy on housing policy, Erika C. Poethig, made a late plea for Mr. Biden to extend the freeze, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.Dana Remus, the White House counsel, expressed concerns that an extension was not a legally available option, and other officials suggested it could prompt the Supreme Court to strike down the administration’s broad use of public health laws to justify a range of federal policies, and their view prevailed, the officials said.In a statement Friday evening, Mr. Biden sought to put the onus on local officials to provide housing aid, saying “there can be no excuse for any state or locality not accelerating funds to landlords and tenants.”“Every state and local government must get these funds out to ensure we prevent every eviction we can,” he added.In the past week, Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary overseeing the program, had sent letters to officials in several localities, including New York, warning that their share of the cash could be taken back if it was not spent by mid-September, according to two senior administration officials. The White House is especially concerned about the sluggish pace of spending in Florida.Emily A. Benfer, a professor at Wake Forest University who specializes in health and housing law, said it was not entirely fair to blame the states, because many local governments had to build their rental assistance programs from scratch.It has also been difficult to gain buy-in from landlords, who are required to fill out complex financial forms and follow strict eligibility rules. Some simply do not want to, especially if they have more informal arrangements with tenants. In addition, many landlords and tenants do not even know the aid program exists.Big and small landlords are nearly unanimous in their disdain for the C.D.C.’s moratorium and the patchwork of state and local moratoriums that have augmented it.“They just said ‘You cannot evict and that’s it,’” said Shaker Viswanathan, 65, who owns 16 units in San Diego. “The tenants are the ones that they are trying to take care of, and not anybody else. We still have to make mortgage payments.”If there is one point both tenants and landlords agree on, it is that gaining access to the money remains difficult, and the process must be streamlined.“These applications are just a bear,” said Zach Neumann, a lawyer who runs the Covid-19 Eviction Defense Project in Denver, which has received dozens of calls and emails from renters panicked by the end of the freeze. “It adds a ton of time onto the process and that increases the risk for tenants.”Evictions can be personal crises for all involved — so traumatic, in fact, that many tenants will often leave without resisting just to avoid the ordeal, according to marshals and sheriffs responsible for showing up at people’s doors, hauling out their belongings and locking them out.Kristen Randall, a constable who oversees evictions in the Tucson area, has been reaching out to people on both sides to figure out what happens next.It is a mixed, cloudy picture. Some landlords who are waiting for tenants to get rental assistance are in no rush to evict. Others are planning to take legal action next week to enforce judgments against tenants they have already taken to court.Ms. Randall spent part of Friday visiting renters who faced imminent eviction.“It has been an emotional day,” she said.Ms. Randall repeated what she has been telling those tenants: “When you leave on your own, it is better than me showing up and locking you out.”Ron Lieber More

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    Coronavirus Stimulus Bolsters Biden, Shows Potential Path for Agenda

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNEWS AnalysisPandemic Aid Bolsters Biden and Shows Potential Path for His Agenda in CongressWorking together with the president-elect, bipartisan groups in the Senate and House helped push feuding leaders to compromise. It could be a template for the future.Rather than face an immediate and dire need to act on a pandemic package, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his team can take time to try to fashion a more far-reaching recovery program next month.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesDec. 21, 2020Updated 7:10 p.m. ETProducing it was a torturous, time-consuming affair that did nothing to improve Congress’s reputation for dysfunction. But the agreement on a new pandemic aid package showed the ascendance of moderates as a new force in a divided Senate and validated President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s belief that it is still possible to make deals on Capitol Hill.Along with struggling Americans and businesses, the new president was a major beneficiary of the $900 billion pandemic stimulus measure that Congress haltingly but finally produced on Sunday and was on track to approve late Monday, which will give him some breathing room when he enters the White House next month. Rather than face an immediate and dire need to act on an emergency economic aid package, Mr. Biden and his team can instead take a moment to try to fashion a more far-reaching recovery program and begin to tackle other issues.“President-elect Biden is going to have an economy that is healthier,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and one of the chief players in a breakaway effort by centrists in the Senate and House that led to the compromise. “This is a significant financial injection into the economy at a time that is critical.”The group of moderates was essential to the outcome, pushing Senate and House leaders of both parties into direct personal negotiations that they had avoided for months, and demonstrating how crucial they are likely to be to Mr. Biden. “I’m glad we forced the issue,” said Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who, along with Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, were leaders of a monthslong effort to break the impasse over pandemic aid even as the virus exacted a growing economic and health toll on the country.Given the slender partisan divides that will exist in both the Senate and House next year, the approach could provide a road map for the Biden administration if it hopes to break through congressional paralysis, especially in the Senate, and pass additional legislation. Mr. Biden has said another economic relief plan will be an early priority.“I believe it is going to be the only way we are going to accomplish the president-elect’s agenda in the next two years,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey and a leader of the 50-member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that took part in forging the compromise. “In the long run, this is the way to govern.”But the extraordinarily difficult time Congress had in coming to agreement over pandemic legislation again showed the difficulty of the task Mr. Biden faces. Almost every influential member of the House and Senate acknowledged that the relief was sorely needed, but it was impeded in part by last-minute Republican attempts to undercut Mr. Biden’s future authority. Some Republicans are already suggesting that the latest package should tide over the nation for an extended period, with no additional relief necessary for some time.Senators Mark Warner of Virginia, left, Susan Collins of Maine and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia were part of a moderate bipartisan group that helped negotiate the legislation.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesMr. Biden on Sunday applauded the willingness of lawmakers to “reach across the aisle” and called the effort a “model for the challenging work ahead for our nation.” He was also not an idle bystander in the negotiations.With Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate far apart on how much they were willing to accept in new pandemic spending, Mr. Biden on Dec. 2 threw his support behind the $900 billion plan being pushed by the centrist group. The total was less than half of the $2 trillion that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, had been insisting on.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Lawmakers Resolve Fed Dispute as They Race to Close Stimulus Deal

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLawmakers Resolve Fed Dispute as They Race to Close Stimulus DealTop senators appeared to strike an agreement on the central bank’s lending powers as they struggled to clear away the last sticking points in the $900 billion compromise plan.Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, at the Capitol on Saturday. His proposal on the Federal Reserve is the primary issue remaining in efforts to finalize a $900 billion stimulus deal.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesEmily Cochrane and Published More

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    Congress Grasps for Stimulus Deal as Fed Dispute Poses Final Hurdle

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCongress Grasps for Stimulus Deal as Fed Dispute Poses Final HurdleLeaders struggled to clear away the last sticking points in the $900 billion compromise plan, including a stubborn disagreement over the central bank’s lending powers.Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, at the Capitol on Saturday. His proposal on the Federal Reserve is the primary issue remaining in efforts to finalize a $900 billion stimulus deal.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesEmily Cochrane and Dec. 19, 2020, 7:32 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Congressional leaders worked feverishly on Saturday to resolve an impasse over a Republican push to curtail the powers of the Federal Reserve that was threatening to derail a compromise $900 billion stimulus plan, racing against a Sunday-night deadline to avoid a government shutdown.After a monthslong impasse on a pandemic aid package, Democrats and Republicans were tantalizingly close to completing the emergency plan to rush direct payments, unemployment benefits and food and rental assistance to millions of Americans, relief to businesses, and provide funds for vaccine distribution.But with time running out for a deal, they remained divided over a proposal by Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, to ensure the termination of a series of pandemic relief programs created this year by the Fed and potentially curtail the central bank’s ability to fight financial crises in the future.“We’re right within reach,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told House Democrats in a party conference call on Saturday. But she said Mr. Toomey’s late-stage demands to rein in the Fed were slowing the process.By Saturday evening, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat, said the dispute had cost negotiators another day in their efforts to cement a deal.“It won’t be tonight,” Mr. Durbin said. “It really is up to Mr. Toomey at this point, what he will accept.”Everything else, he said, is “pretty close.”The emerging deal would send direct payments of $600 to many Americans and provide enhanced federal jobless payments of $300-per-week until early spring. It would also provide hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up small businesses, schools and other institutions struggling amid the pandemic.But Democrats said that Mr. Toomey’s proposal, which has been embraced by Republicans, amounted to an attempt to undercut President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his administration’s ability to continue supporting the country’s economic recovery.As drafted, it would prevent the Fed and the Treasury Department from re-establishing programs that have helped to keep credit flowing to municipal borrowers, medium-sized businesses and corporations during the pandemic recession. It would also bar the creation of “similar” programs going forward.Lawmakers and aides in both parties acknowledged that the Fed provision presented the most significant hurdle to a final agreement, even though negotiators were still haggling over a number of outstanding technical details, including how to provide for food assistance and the scope of unemployment benefits.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, criticized the Toomey proposal.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesSenator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on the Senate floor that Mr. Toomey’s language was the “number one outstanding issue.”With government funding set to lapse Sunday and both chambers hoping to merge the stimulus package with a catchall measure to cover all federal spending for the remainder of the fiscal year, time was dwindling to find a resolution.The Coronavirus Outbreak More