final deadline, december 31, 2023 before the program ends. student loan payments and interest paused, of course, since early days of the pandemic starting with president trump and continuing through the biden administration, i ll tell you, budget hawks say this is a big giveaway, frankly, without offsets, and without congressional approval. the president used his pandemic era powers to do this, john. christine romans with the price tag. thank you very much. ahead, reaction from senator joe manchin who called the president s plan excessive. this morning cnn has exclusively obtained new documentary footage of former president trump ally roger stone and in the video stone is seen calling for violence before the votes were counted in the 2020 election, and telling his associates to claim victory even if trump lost. cnn sunlen serfaty is joining us now. really something you have to see. certainly is. powerful video. roger stone in his own words and
without a cbo score, the gold standard for tallying up the price tag and the pay-fors for proposals in congress, budget hawks say the total price is a mystery and that s why some moderates feel uneasy. speaker pelosi in the past used to get that and used it as an attack against republicans. they are rushing it without a cbo report. forcing a vote without a cbo score shows that the republicans are afraid of the facts. they are afraid of learning the full consequences of their plan. but others pressuring pelosi for a vote today think cost estimates they do have from outside economists and the joint committee on taxation should be enough. i just feel comfortable that there are sufficient documentation, documentation, numbers documentation. but some of the documentation out there from the penn wharton budget model says the math doesn t add up and, in fact,
wealthy americans along with corporations too. increased spending on health care, climate, education, other social safety nets is worth the high cost. republicans and budget hawks are worried about inflation though, neil. even before the showdown on the $3.5 trillion spending plan, americans are spending inflation at their grocery stores, the cost of basic goods increasing 5% from a year ago, even the cost of grain, cattle and horses. this massive spending hinges on the support of so-called moderates in the senate, support needed because of the senate s 50-50 split. every democrat must vote for it and, if necessary, the vice president will cast the deciding vote. i will say as it relates to the next steps here, we want to win the vote when it happens. that s our objective. reporter: the president spoke to nancy pelosi and chuck schumer last night. the president s at camp david over the weekend, we expect talks to continue throughout the weekend. neil?
financing the bill. the digital-currency lobby objected to language that this would have expanded the tax burden on certain intermediaries. but it s not just these technical amendments holding up the bill. the nonpartisan congressional budget office came out with an estimate, on thursday, which projected that the deal would balloon the deficit by 256 billion over a decade. that contradicts the claim which was always suspect and relied on some kind of creative accounting to suggest that this bill would be revenue neutral and fully costed. so that may also be giving some republican budget hawks some cold feet. but all in all, i think this is just something they have to work through and that will get through in the senate. speaking of republicans, it will need votes from at least ten of them to pass. so, why would they vote for this? sending a big win to biden and the democrats. and what kind of backlash could they face from their voters, back home? and we have to remember, donald trump
March 9, 2021
The latest Covid-19 relief package is finally coming to fruition in the US. The US House of Representatives passed the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion bill Wednesday, as Democratic leaders won enough backing to pass the legislation onto the president to sign into law. While later versions of the bill altered Joe Biden’s original vision for the package, the remaining billions of dollars in economic relief are still a coup for US progressives.
That’s not just because concessions Democrats made to party moderates to pass the bill were arguably on the margins. The spending measures are also sweeping relative to Covid-19 relief measures in other developed economies, and they far exceed US relief measures from the last economic crisis. This chart shows where US Covid-19 relief spending falls relative to other major economies before the latest bill. With the $1.9 trillion added in, the US’s total pandemic relief spending will rise to 27.1% of GDP according to th