Hayes insists Biden has the correct federal relief balance sheet

By Scott Benjamin

U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-5) says Democratic President Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act should not be “negotiated” down in cost even though, according to CNBC, 16 bipartisan senators have told the administration that they question the price tag.

Hayes of Wolcott said the package must be “robust” to address an economy which, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, contracted 3.5 percent in 2020, the largest setback since 1946.

The congresswoman said further efforts need to be taken to “stabilize” the economy, which within two months last year went from 3.5 percent unemployment to a rate of 14.7 percent before showing gradual signs of improvement starting last summer.

The Washington Post has reported that 10 Republican senators, led by Susan Collins (R-Maine), proposed a $600 billion package on January 31 that is likely to generate only limited support from Democrats, who may seek to use special budget rules to circumvent the 60-vote threshold that they normally would need in the Senate. The administration has indicated it wants to have a plan enacted by mid-March, but is willing to speak with 10 GOP senators.

“The key to getting robust job opportunities is to cease any delay, any inaction, any wait-and-see around this rescue plan,” Ridgefield High School graduate Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on “Fox News Sunday,” as reported by the Washington Post.

Hayes and other Democrats in the U.S. House approved the $3 trillion HEROES Act last May. That package was never approved in the U.S. Senate.

USA Today has reported that a group of bipartisan senators had dinner at U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) home on November 17, which led to a more targeted $908 billion package that was approved in late December, featuring money for vaccines, $600 per person stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits.

Former Republican President Donald Trump had signed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act on March 27.

Hayes - who recently began her second term in the sprawling 41-municipality district which stretches from Salisbury to Newtown - said there should be assistance to states and municipalities, noting that, among other things, “they are expected to set up COVID testing sites.”

The congresswoman said in a phone interview with Patch.com that chief municipal elected officials in her district also have been seeking additional federal funds to “help recoup” some expenses associated with the pandemic. She related that additional relief funding could make the difference in keeping some “essential” public employees on the payroll.

Wall Street executive Steven Rattner, who was a counselor to the Treasury Department under former Democratic President Barack Obama, wrote in The New York Times that, in part, Biden’s proposal is “a legislative Trojan horse.”

Rattner stated that he understands the president’s goal of keeping various Democratic constituencies content, “But we shouldn’t use the virus as an excuse to abandon any pretense of fiscal responsibility. Nor should we dismiss the possibility of inflationary pressures from the combined force of federal spending and pent-up consumer demand. Expectations of future inflation have poked above 2 percent for the first time since 2018.”

Wall Street Journal columnist William Galston, who worked as a domestic policy advisor to former Democratic President Bill Clinton, wrote that, “potentially cooperative Republicans and moderate Democrats told National Economic Council director Brian Deese that the proposal is too large, poorly targeted, and contains measures—such as a $15 federal minimum wage—that are at best loosely related to the current crisis.”

The relief costs follow a surge in deficit spending under Trump.

In analyzing Biden’s economic program last summer, former Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson noted that he had proposed increasing taxes on the wealthy to pay for part of his proposals.

The president’s platform included an increase in the top individual tax rate from 37 to 39.6 percent and a boost in the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent.

Hayes said she would have to review each proposed high-end tax increase in depth before deciding whether to support them, although she indicated that “my constituents would benefit” from Biden’s tax proposals.

She said the surge in stock market activity – with the Dow Jones reaching 30,000 in November for the first time - is “not a true or total indicator” of economic strength.

Hayes said that for the rest of America “their hours have been cut, their jobs are in jeopardy and the local economy is shutting down.”

During the pandemic, Hayes has been a point person in the House Democratic caucus on funding for child day care centers.

Last spring she distributed a news release that called for a “100 billion investment in the child care sector.” She added that “even before this pandemic, over 44 percent of people in Connecticut lived in a child-care desert.”

She said in the phone interview that we “haven’t done enough,” but added there has been “much more mention in Congress” over the recent months about the need for child care assistance.

Hayes, a member of the U.S. House Education & Labor Committee, said there are parents who “don’t have child care and can’t go to work” because their children are home from school.

The Washington Post has reported that teachers are supposed to among the first people to get the COVID-19 vaccine but that “even in the best case, most educators will not be fully vaccinated until late February at earliest.”

Is it possible to return to conventional instruction during the current academic year or that going to have to wait until the new academic year in late August?

“I cannot predict that,” remarked Hayes, who was the national Teacher of the Year in 2016. She added that it will depend on the “resources” that the schools have to address the pandemic.

During a virtual news conference last July with a small group of U.S. House Democratic colleagues, Hayes said, the reopening of schools would encompass a considerable amount of logistical detail.

"We're discussing things in July" that should have been established much earlier,” she said, as reported by Patch.com

At the time, Hayes said that steps should have been taken last spring, for example, to provide funding to improve inadequate ventilation systems and for professional development in online learning in case the buildings were not ready for occupancy in the fall.

New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote on January 29 that, “in-person learning can be done safely with the right precautions. This was unclear last March and April, but now study after study has shown that schools can be safe. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just attested to this fact. The evidence seems clear. . . Private and some public schools are already operating safely all around the country, with little evidence that attendance is spreading the virus.”

On another topic, Hayes said that she is “most supportive” of the president’s climate change initiatives, not just because of the “environment” but “from a jobs perspective.”

Some elected officials have said that energy reform has been long overdue. Former Republican President Gerald Ford pledged in his 1975 State of the Union address to make the United States energy independent within 10 years. In 1977 former Democratic President Jimmy Carter called the energy crisis “the moral equivalent of war.”

When Barron’s reported in 2003 that fuel cell technology could make the internal combustion engine obsolete within 25 years it seemed like a far-fetched notion.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Hartford) announced in July 2006, while making his first bid for the seat in the Fifth Congressional District, that he was proposing legislation to require that 70 percent of the cars made in the United States have flex-fuel capability by 2017. It didn’t happen.

However, on January 28, NBC News reported that General Motors will phase out gas and diesel engines by 2035, apparently in response to Biden’s plans to reduce gas emissions. He already has signed executive orders, including one to cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Hayes said the president’s plan will result in “shifting production” and “retraining,” workers in parts of the economy.

She said that she is “very excited” that, among other things, Biden underscored his commitment to energy reform by appointing former Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy as National Climate Advisor, and former Secretary of State John Kerry as the U.S, Special Presidential Envoy on Climate, both new positions.