By Richard Rubin in Washington and Eliza Collins in Wilmington, Del. 

President-elect Joe Biden is calling for a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan to help Americans weather the economic shock of the pandemic and pump more money into testing and vaccine distribution.

Mr. Biden in a speech Thursday evening described his priorities related to the pandemic for the early days of his administration. His plan calls for Congress to back a round of $1,400-per-person direct payments to most households, a $400-per-week unemployment insurance supplement through September, expanded paid leave and increases in the child tax credit. Aid for households makes up about half of the plan's cost, with much of the rest going to vaccine distribution and state and local governments.

"We have to act and we have to act now," Mr. Biden said.

Mr. Biden, a Democrat, is set to take office on Wednesday as the virus death toll has topped 3,000 daily deaths repeatedly in recent weeks and the country deals with the economic fallout from continued business and school closures. The Senate is also expected to hold a trial after the House impeached President Trump for the second time.

Mr. Biden wants Congress to act quickly to address what he sees as a national emergency, incoming Biden administration officials said earlier Thursday. The plan includes some ideas previously floated by congressional Democrats and Mr. Biden's campaign that Republicans have rejected -- including raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour -- and it isn't clear which pieces can become law and how soon lawmakers will act. Most legislation needs 60 votes in the Senate, which would require Republican votes since Democrats will control 50 seats.

"We will get right to work to turn President-elect Biden's vision into legislation that will pass both chambers and be signed into law," Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said in a joint statement.

Brian Riedl, a budget expert at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute who has advised Republican lawmakers, said spending to accelerate vaccinations and to reopen schools could get widespread support. However, Mr. Riedl criticized the full package as too big and broad. "It's too much of a grab bag of traditional Democratic priorities that don't relate to the downturn," he said.

Mr. Biden is also expected to release a second proposal focused on economic recovery that will also use jobs and infrastructure as a tool to combat climate change, the officials said.

Mr. Biden's American Rescue Plan calls for additional stimulus checks beyond the $1,200 round approved in March and the $600 set approved in December, sending out an additional $1,400 per person to bring the amount sent to families in the past few months to the $2,000 mark he promised. He would expand eligibility to include adult dependents such as college students who were excluded from previous versions.

In a poverty-fighting move long sought by many Democrats, the child tax credit would rise from $2,000 to $3,000 for this year under Mr. Biden's plan, with an additional $600 for children under 6 years old and new rules that would let the poorest households get the full benefit. The plan also includes money to help households with the costs of rent and child care, plus $350 billion for state and local governments.

Mr. Biden is proposing to extend the eviction and foreclosure moratorium, which currently goes until the end of this month, through the end of September.

While Mr. Biden supports $10,000 of student loan forgiveness, the current proposal doesn't include it, an official said. Instead the focus will be on extending student loan forbearance, which allows people to temporarily pause loan payments.

The president-elect won't offer spending-cut or tax-increase offsets for his plan and will instead rely on federal borrowing, according to a Biden official. Mr. Biden's argument is that now isn't the time to worry about widening budget deficits, given the emergency and low interest rates. He has said Congress should help tide households over until the pandemic eases and address an uneven recovery in which many low-income people are struggling while white-collar workers are saving more.

"There's no sugarcoating it. The country faces unprecedented challenges, " Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), the likely new chairman of the Finance Committee, said earlier this week. He said he sees the mid-March expiration of $300-per-week unemployment insurance as a crucial deadline for congressional action. "The country isn't going to be back to normal by March."

Glenn Hubbard, a Columbia Business School professor who was President George W. Bush's chief economist, said a big plan would be better than one that wasn't large enough. "One lesson from the financial crisis is that you want to be careful about doing too little," he said.

The budget package would include $50 billion to increase coronavirus testing, including at schools, as well as federal funds for states, a national vaccination program, disaster relief, expansion of the public-health workforce, and other efforts to support Mr. Biden's push to deliver 100 million shots in the first 100 days of his presidency. The plan calls for providing free vaccines to people regardless of their immigration status, which could face pushback from some Republicans. Mr. Biden will lay out details for his vaccine plan Friday, and he said the rollout so far has been a "dismal failure."

Mr. Biden, echoing his campaign rhetoric about working across the aisle, will push for a bipartisan agreement, the officials said. In a Senate that is set to be split 50-50, that would mean holding all Democrats and persuading at least 10 Republicans to join him to overcome procedural hurdles. Democrats hold a narrow majority in the House.

On some aspects of the plan, bipartisan support is possible. Some GOP senators, including Florida's Marco Rubio, support bigger stimulus checks.

Last year, lawmakers reached a stalemate when Republicans resisted aid for state and local governments and Democrats objected to a liability shield for businesses. The result was a postelection deal of about $900 billion, which Democrats described as a down payment.

Now, because they won both Senate seats in Georgia this month, Democrats could use special fast-track rules known as budget reconciliation to advance a more partisan bill, which would require just 51 votes in the Senate. If the 50 Democrats remain united, they could tap Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to cast the tiebreaking vote. But that path comes with restrictions, including a limited number of times Democrats can use it this year and rules that confine reconciliation bills to tax and fiscal matters rather than broader policies.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who will chair the committee in charge of budget reconciliation, has been talking in recent days with Mr. Biden and his team about relief efforts. Mr. Sanders has also been crafting a relief package of his own that can move through reconciliation and includes stimulus checks.

"I think there will probably be different approaches, but we're all rowing in the same direction here to address the enormous crises facing working families. I can certainly tell you we are going to be as aggressive as we possibly can in the midst of this terrible crisis," he said.

South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the Democratic whip, said he expects relief efforts to be broken up into what is possible immediately, with bipartisan support, and what may need to wait for reconciliation.

"What's got to be done right away, we don't have time for reconciliation, " he said.

Much of the health portion of the funding package would go directly toward combating the virus through more testing and faster vaccine administration. Mr. Biden will urge Congress to provide $160 billion in funding as part of launching the national vaccination program, expanding testing, mobilizing a public-health jobs program, and other steps to build capacity to fight the virus.

Mr. Biden would set up community vaccination sites nationwide, address health disparities such as equitable distribution of vaccines, and eliminate supply shortage problems, according to his campaign.

The president-elect also plans to work with Congress to boost federal funds to Medicaid to cover vaccine administration following repeated calls for additional increases from governors.

Mr. Biden is also proposing a $30 billion investment for a national disaster relief program that would enable full reimbursement to states for deploying the National Guard for emergency response.

Mr. Biden's Covid-19 advisory board has been working on ways to increase vaccinations as more states identify a more transmissible variant that has driven a spike in cases in the U.K., according to one person familiar with the discussions.

Many states have struggled to increase administration of the vaccine, citing inconsistent information on arriving doses from the federal government and health departments already stretched thin financially by dealing with the coronavirus. Congress on Dec. 21 approved $8.4 billion to help states with their efforts, but by then the vaccination rollout was already under way, and some states say it will take weeks to hire enough staff for more extensive vaccination campaigns.

If manufacturing projections previously put forth by companies hold up, Mr. Biden's pledge to administer 100 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines during the first 100 days of his presidency should be possible, according to manufacturing and supply chain experts.

Stephanie Armour contributed to this article.

Write to Richard Rubin at richard.rubin@wsj.com and Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 14, 2021 20:10 ET (01:10 GMT)

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