Covid relief wasn’t the only pressing issue facing Congress. Here are 6 others

On Mar 11, 2021

Here are some key legislative issues Congress and Biden are likely to confront in the days ahead:

Minimum wage

Despite some state and local governments increasing their minimum wages, the legislative drive to increase the wage has stalled in Congress, where Democrats were in the minority in either the House or Senate, or both, from 2010 until this year.

Now, with narrow majorities in both chambers and Biden in the White House, Democrats are renewing the push. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal to get a federal $15 minimum wage increase from $7.25 back into Biden’s Covid relief bill failed last week, with eight Democrats siding with Republicans to vote down the amendment. The Senate Parliamentarian had ruled the hike could not be included in the measure under the strict rules of budget reconciliation.

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, one of the eight Democrats who voted against Sanders’ amendment, said in a statement that she is open to having a separate debate in Congress over the minimum wage, just not through this reconciliation process being used to pass Covid relief.

But the defeat shed light on the hurdles progressives will face in passing a $15 minimum wage legislation and a new path forward is unclear. An unlikely option is to introduce a separate bill and try to get enough senators on board to clear the 60-vote threshold, but Democrats are not fully united behind the proposal. An even more difficult option would be to eliminate the filibuster, which would lower the 60-vote threshold, and therefore require fewer votes to pass the minimum wage legislation.

White House Senior Adviser Cedric Richmond said during a CBSN interview on Monday that the White House will keep pushing for the $15 minimum wage increase and that Biden believes he can work with both sides to get work done, preferring not to change filibuster rules.

Infrastructure

An aerial view from a drone shows electrical lines running through a neighborhood on February 19, 2021 in Austin, Texas.

Talks for bipartisan legislation on improving roads, railway systems and other infrastructure needs could be back on the table, especially due to the climate crisis and after winter storms crippled Southern states and Texas.

Infrastructure has been viewed as a bipartisan opportunity by both sides, but the issue faltered during the Trump administration. Talks around an infrastructure plan with Trump and Republicans broke down in 2019 and the repeated claims by the White House that the coming week would be “infrastructure week” became a running joke for Democrats and Republicans alike. The former President tweeted at the beginning of the pandemic that he was open to an infrastructure package to boost the economy, but the House passed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill in July with only three Republicans supporting it and the measure stalled in the then-GOP controlled Senate.

Still, infrastructure is widely seen as the most likely area where the two parties could strike a deal.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Sunday that the next legislative objective would be to pass Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, calling it a “massive infrastructure bill.”

Rep. John Yarmuth, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said Tuesday that Democrats will use every option available to them to pass the upcoming…

Covid relief wasn’t the only pressing issue facing Congress. Here are 6 others

Minimum wage

Infrastructure

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