President-elect Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic relief proposal serves as the opening salvo in a legislative battle that could be prolonged by the go-big price tag and the inclusion of initiatives opposed by many Republicans.
Biden’s hand was bolstered by Friday’s release of U.S. retail sales data for December, which showed a third straight monthly decline as the pandemic sapped activity. The results indicated that the biggest part of the U.S. economy — consumer spending — took a step back last quarter.
Sameer leads a team dedicated to continuous growth and delivering a portfolio of services to leading insurance companies around the world. Sameer brings to this role particular expertise in the insurance industry, operations excellence, data analytics, and digital transformation. Sameer is also a certified Six Sigma Black Belt.
Sameer has been in leadership roles of increasing responsibility at Genpact for 15 years and was instrumental in setting up the insurance business at Genpact. His holistic approach to serving clients, and his expert grasp of digital technologies and deep domain expertise, have helped him lead large, successful engagements over the years.
Prior to Genpact, Sameer worked for seven years in the insurance business at General Electric, earning a Master Black Belt designation and serving as an operations leader in GE’s insurance vertical focused on claims and underwriting operations.
Sameer earned dual masters’ degrees in management and economics from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India.
Shelby is a reporter at Employee Benefit News. Send pitches to shelby.rosenberg@arizent.com.
Jack Reagan is a managing director at UHY Advisors and a member of the firm’s national management committee that oversees the national audit and assurance practice. He has over 30 years of experience serving state and local governments, local school districts, federal government entities, and not for profit organizations as both an auditor and consultant. He has served many of the largest state and local government entities throughout the country, including New York City, Boston, San Jose, Nashville and Washington, D.C., as well as the states of New York, Texas, New Jersey, Delaware and California and Fairfax County (Virginia), Loudoun County (Virginia) and Montgomery County (Maryland). Reagan has also successfully assisted numerous localities in obtaining and maintaining their GFOA and ASB Certificates of Excellence in Financial Reporting. He graduated from the University of Richmond with a BSBA in accounting.
“It’s not hard to see that we’re in a once-in-several-generations economic crisis,” Biden said Thursday night in unveiling his plan. “We have to act and we have to act now.”
The package has elements that would likely appeal to enough moderate Republicans to gain favor in the Senate — including a $400 billion effort to contain the coronavirus and speed the economy’s reopening, as well as $1,400 in additional direct stimulus payments.
Other parts are set to spur partisan warfare, including Biden’s proposals to more than double the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, provide large-scale aid for state governments and offer higher unemployment benefits through September.
Negotiations could end up producing a smaller bipartisan package in the coming weeks, followed by a larger budget bill later in the year with Democratic priorities. Biden said he plans to unveil a second major package, aimed at longer-term economic rebuilding, at a joint session of Congress next month.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida kicked off calls for breaking the relief plan into pieces, tweeting that since Biden served in the Senate for more than 35 years “he knows the plan he outlined tonight can’t pass ‘quickly.’” Rubio called for proceeding with the $1,400 stimulus checks first.
While it’s possible Democrats might find ways to get the bulk of the package through the Senate with just majority support, “it looks more likely that the need to find bipartisan support might constrain the size of the package,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Alec Phillips wrote in a note to clients. Still, Goldman boosted its forecast for near-term fiscal stimulus to $1.1 trillion from the $750 billion it had predicted before Biden’s roll-out.
Biden has several advantages in the struggle, including an ability to bypass Senate Republicans on some of the items using a special tool called budget reconciliation.
Enjoying unified Democratic control of Congress, Biden will also have the White House bully pulpit to put pressure on Congress to act. He has offered his plan as a way for the nation to come together to provide relief to impoverished Americans after the unprecedented mob violence in the Capitol last week, and amid the record spike in deaths from the pandemic.
“Unity is not a pie-in-the-sky dream, it is a practical step to getting things done,” Biden said Thursday. “The very health of our nation is at stake.”
The looming trial of outgoing President Donald Trump is set to prolong the partisan tensions of recent weeks. Unless incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican leader Mitch McConnell strike agreement on procedures, it could prevent a floor vote on Biden’s cabinet nominations and legislation for weeks, though it wouldn’t delay committee work.
If Biden can’t get a deal on the whole bill, provisions such as stimulus checks and a $400-per-week boost to unemployment insurance could be put into a budget bill and passed with just 50 votes. There is a debate about whether the minimum wage could also be raised that way.
The incoming president is a veteran of dealing with McConnell, who may be willing to horse-trade for his priorities like COVID-19 liability protections for employers or an extension of business tax breaks.
Many economists are anticipating a robust period of growth in the U.S. once vaccinations get the virus under control and normal commerce resumes, but a rough road remains. The drop in retail sales last month came alongside the first decline in monthly payrolls since April. Unemployment remained mired at 6.7 percent.
Things could worsen in the coming months. Some extra support measures for small businesses and the unemployed passed by Congress in December run out in March, and a federal eviction moratorium expires at the end of January.
“Given the urgency of the current crisis and the desire to achieve passage in the administration’s first 100 days, we expect a narrower package to ultimately emerge — in the vicinity of $1 trillion,” said Andrew Husby, an economist with Bloomberg Economics. “That figure could be enough to push economic growth above 5 percent this year, compared with our current baseline of 3.5 percent.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a statement Thursday it “welcomes the introduction of President-elect Biden’s American Rescue Plan,” and singled out praise for the vaccination focus, while omitting comment on the minimum-wage increase.
Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, said the package was bad for businesses. “Special interests and liberals are cheering. The jobless and Main Street are left shaking their heads.”
But leading Democrats praised the plan.
Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged in a statement to work quickly to put “Biden’s vision into legislation that will pass both chambers and be signed into law.”
Congressional Democrats will have their own requests. Incoming Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden indicated he wants the plan tweaked to tie unemployment benefits to unemployment rates. “I look forward to taking the lead on a proposal that puts a stop to needlessly lurching from crisis to crisis, and gives jobless workers the certainty that they will be able to buy groceries and make rent,” he said in a statement.
Major lift
The bill would dedicate $350 billion for state and local governments, well beyond the $160 billion for such funding included in a bipartisan compromise that never made it into the December package.
Biden is also seeking to boost refundable tax credits for those with low-income and children while substantially expanding paid family and medical leave.
All of this will be a major lift for Congress to complete by the mid-March expiration of expanded unemployment benefits for gig workers and the long-term jobless, which has created a benefits cliff.
The new administration is under pressure not to allow a repeat of the eight-month standoff that held up the last round of economic relief.
One advantage: the departure of a volatile Trump, who changed his positions frequently in the talks and ultimately sat on the sidelines after losing the November election — only to threaten a veto of the passed bill at the last minute.
--With assistance from Mario Parker and Christopher Condon