- Biden said he would support providing a stimulus check for individuals earning up to $75,000 a year.
- It comes as more Democrats criticized efforts to restrict the income thresholds, including the freshman Democratic senators from Georgia.
- Biden suggested he was still in touch with Senate Republicans as committees kicked off efforts to write legislation this week.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
President Joe Biden threw his support on Tuesday behind initial legislation from House Democrats that would maintain the $75,000 a year income threshold for stimulus checks after proposals to lower it sparked opposition from many Democrats.
Biden met with several business leaders in the Oval Office to discuss his $1.9 trillion emergency spending package and continue gathering support for it. Early polls indicate it is popular with a strong majority of the American public.
The gathering included top business executives such as JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon; Doug McMillion, CEO of Walmart; Sonia Syngal, CEO of GAP; and Tom Donahue of the Chamber of Commerce. Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also attended.
The president kicked off the meeting by indicating that the White House was exchanging papers with Senate Republicans and were attempting to determine areas of common ground between them. Then he took questions on the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump and stimulus check eligibility as talks started in earnest.
He responded with a simple “yes” when asked by reporters about keeping the stimulus check thresholds at existing levels. White House press secretary Jen Psaki also indicated on Tuesday the White House supported the move.
The comments comes as House Democrats rejected efforts to tighten the income thresholds for a fresh wave of stimulus checks. Some centrist Democrats floated a plan to tighten the thresholds, but it sparked an outcry from lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders as well as the freshman Democratic senators from Georgia who campaigned on sending $2,000 checks.
House Democrats unveiled initial legislation on Monday evening that would send $1,400 checks to individuals making up to $75,000 and couples earning up to $150,000. Those are the same parameters the president laid out last month in his rescue package.
However, the payments would be capped at a lower threshold for higher-earners to restrict who can get a direct payment. The House Democratic plan would phase them out for singles earning over $100,000 and couples making above $200,000.
Biden’s plan includes $1,400 stimulus checks, $400 federal unemployment benefits through September, a bigger child tax credit, and assistance to state and local governments among other provisions. The House Democratic version of the plan would cut a month of enhanced unemployment insurance.
Committees will spend the next two weeks marking up the legislation, so additional changes are still possible before the final bill reaches the House floor. Democrats are using the reconciliation process, a maneuver allowing legislation to clear the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes instead of the 60 generally required to ward off a filibuster.
A group of 10 Senate Republicans led by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine put forward a $618 billion measure earlierthis month. Democrats panned it because they argued it would provide meager federal assistance. Still, the group sent a letter to the White House on Thursday saying they were “committed to working in a bipartisan fashion.”
Asked about the state of bipartisan relief talks on Tuesday, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of the Republicans in the group, told Insider “we’re exchanging letters.” He did not specify beyond that and his office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Republicans are staunchly opposed to the relief package, arguing it’s a huge amount of untargeted spending. Rep. Kevin Brady, the ranking Republican of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, criticized the Democratic efforts to bypass Republicans on pandemic relief.
“Our focus should be on crushing the virus and rebuilding our economy,” Brady said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the bill placed before us at this late hour don’t fit that effort, and Democrats are insisting on pushing forward on an almost $2 trillion bill without bipartisan compromise.”
Republicans have also used the process to circumvent Democrats. In 2017, Brady chaired the committee that helped push GOP tax law through without any Democratic support.