House expected to send relief bill to President’s desk
Yahoo Finance’s Jessica Smith, Julie Hyman, Myles Udland and Brian Sozzi discuss the latest developments on the coronavirus stimulus package.
Video Transcript
MYLES UDLAND: Today is also vote day in Washington, DC. The House getting set to take up the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. That vote is expected to begin this afternoon. And we begin there with Yahoo Finance's Jessica Smith joining us now. Jess, what do you expect from the House later today and sort of where this bill goes and how quickly it could end up on President Biden's desk?
JESSICA SMITH: Well Myles, right now the House is voting on a procedural vote that Republicans forced, specifically Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, in an effort to delay the actual vote on the COVID relief bill. So now that the relief bill that was set to happen around noon is delayed until later this afternoon. This is something we've seen Republicans do quite a bit recently. It's a problem that the Democrats are really getting frustrated with. But later this afternoon, the House is expected to vote on this bill and pass it. When it was first in the House before the Senate changed it, two Democrats voted against it. Now we expect just one Democrat to vote against it.
One of them had said that the Senate changes were enough to secure his support. Democrats were already taking a victory lap on this legislation yesterday. And Speaker Pelosi was asked if after this, there will have to be another relief bill. She said, they'll have to ask the virus. Now she did start to lay out some of Democrats' future priorities. She said that we'll be hearing more about their efforts to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour later this week. And then we heard from Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal about the expanded child tax credit that's included in this relief bill. He says it's unlikely to go away. Let's watch.
REP. RICHARD NEAL: But one thing that you should know about the tax code, getting something out of the code is oftentimes harder than getting something in the code. So I've already had some thoughts about how we're going to expand it and make it permanent. And I intend to share those in the near future.
JESSICA SMITH: Now it's not exactly clear when President Biden is going to sign the legislation once it makes it through the House. It could be some point today, maybe tomorrow. They've said that they will do this quickly. So we'll be waiting on any word from the White House.
JULIE HYMAN: And Jess, in terms of other business that Congress is taking care of, there's been sort of a slow start to confirmations to President Joe Biden's cabinet. But the Senate, I believe they held some votes yesterday and that's expected to continue today?
JESSICA SMITH: Today, we should see final votes on the Attorney General role and then the HUD Secretary role. So that's Merrick Garland for AG and Marcia Fudge for HUD Secretary, as he did say, yes, it has gotten off to a little bit of a slow start here. President Biden is still waiting on quite a few cabinet members to get confirmed. But these two are set to happen at some point today. And we do expect them both to be confirmed with bipartisan support.
JULIE HYMAN: Jess, I'm curious about timing of some of these items. I saw some reporting this morning that some of the more extreme members of the GOP, Marjorie Taylor Green, for example, were trying to still throw spanners in the works of Congress, sort of delaying tactics to get the aid package through. Is that still a factor or are we past all of that at this point?
JESSICA SMITH: It's definitely still a factor. It's happening right now. Marjorie Taylor Greene did force a vote this morning to delay things. That's still going on as we speak. So that is something that Democrats are very frustrated with. We heard from one just a little bit ago, one lawmaker said it's unconscionable that Republicans are doing this, that they're delaying a vote on such an important package for another vote that they know is going to fail, but they're still making the entire House go through this process and really dragging things out. So I think you'll see, maybe Democratic leadership try to make some changes to avoid this if this continues.
Because you are seeing people like Greene force all of these votes on measures that are not really controversial, that typically would be fast tracked. So you will see maybe Democratic leadership try to figure out what they can do to stop that.
MYLES UDLAND: All right, Yahoo Finance's Jessica Smith with all the latest down in Washington, DC. Jess, we'll circle back as we get some more movement on some of these votes that we are discussing.
