Buffalo's poverty, budget hole would get help under Biden's pandemic relief plan

The giant proposal is not just a stimulus plan, but also an anti-poverty program. Not only would it give most Americans a $1,400 cash payment to add to the $600 government outlay they received recently, but it also would dramatically bolster federal efforts to feed the poor and prop up the incomes of people at the lowest rungs on the economic ladder.

That's why Rep. Brian Higgins of Buffalo – a city with a 30.1% poverty rate according to the Census Bureau's 2019 American Community Survey – lauded the proposal as a big step toward economic equality.

"People are hurting, and it addresses fundamentally where the most vulnerable are," said Higgins, a Democrat. "A lot of people that need help will get help under this bill, so from that standpoint, I have a very favorable view of it."

Republicans, meanwhile offered largely muted responses to the proposal. It includes some things that are anathema to many Republicans, such as a national $15 minimum wage. But the proposal also includes measures – like $350 billion in state and local aid – that New York Republican Reps. Tom Reed and Chris Jacobs have been advocating.

“Based on our work in the Problem Solvers Caucus on the last Covid-19 relief package, there is no doubt additional aid is needed to help our economy and the American people through the end of the pandemic," said Reed, of Corning, who serves as the Republican co-chair of that meet-in-the-middle group. “While this plan appears to include some partisan items, we look forward to working with the Biden Administration and our Senate colleagues on a package that will provide those in need with targeted, streamlined relief.”

Here's a closer look at what the Biden bill would mean for poorer communities such as Buffalo, and for cash-strapped governments and schools – as well as a preview of the politics of enacting Biden's plan.

A boost for the poor

Buffalo felt like it was in the midst of a comeback before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, but that renewal never pushed deep into the city – which, for years, has ranked among the nation's poorest. In 2018, for example, the city had a child poverty rate of 47.2%, the nation's fourth-highest.

That figure could drop dramatically, though, under the Biden plan. According to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, the Biden plan includes so many proposals to help the poor that it "could cut child poverty in half in 2021."

Here's a closer look at the proposal's provisions that aim to combat poverty as well as the pandemic:

• Those $1,400 cash stimulus payments, which would go to most Americans – although Biden's 19-page proposal does not specify an income cutoff level where those payments would diminish or disappear.

• Extended unemployment benefits that would add another $400 weekly to the unemployment checks that people receive through this September.

• A continued 15% increase in SNAP benefits, thereby boosting money for food stamps through the end of the year.

• A new child tax credit valued at $3,600 for children under age 6 and $3,000 for children ages 6 through 17.

• A near tripling of the Earned Income Tax Credit, to $1,500, and expanding eligibility for that low-income tax break to those who make as much as $21,000 a year.

• Nearly $30 billion to help people pay their rent and utility bills, as well as an extension of the federal eviction moratorium until Sept. 30.

• An emergency paid leave program to make sure workers stay home so that they don't spread the virus.

Biden calls his effort "the American Rescue Plan." And in a speech in Wilmington, Del., on Thursday, he made clear that it is meant to rescue the nation both from the Covid-19 pandemic as well as its longer-term economic troubles.

"It’s not hard to see that we are in the middle of a once-in-several generation economic crisis within a once-in-several generation public health crisis – a crisis of deep human suffering in plain sight," he said. "And there is no time to wait. We have to act and act now."

State and local aid

Biden's plan also includes something that no Covid relief measure since March has delivered: direct aid to the nation's troubled state and local governments, as well as money for schools.

Some $350 billion would be set aside for state and local governments. That's about 20% less than House Democrats proposed in their last, failed effort to win such aid, which Senate Republicans resisted, calling it a bailout to poorly managed governments.

Biden did not spell out how he wants to divide that state and local cash, but one possibility would be to simply use the formula in that last failed Democratic effort. And if Congress did that, New York's state government would get more than Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is seeking.

"We need $15 billion from the rescue plan as outlined by President-elect Joe Biden, and we're going to look for the Senate and the House members to actually deliver that," Cuomo said Friday.

Congressional sources stressed that the Biden team has not agreed to that old formula and could come up with a very different one. But if it used that old formula, Buffalo would get far more money than the $65 million it needs to patch its pandemic-related budget hole, and Erie County would get more than what it needs, too.

Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz, the northeast regional representative for the National Association of Counties, said he hopes the eventual aid formula delivers help to all the counties that need it and not just large ones like Erie County – which were the only ones to get help under the Cares Act relief package last March.

He also noted that state and local aid is by no means the only part of the Biden proposal that will help other governments. It includes $50 billion for Covid-19 testing and $30 billion that will pay the entire cost of disaster relief on the local level. In addition, the plan calls for the hiring of 100,000 public health workers and sets aside $20 billion for a national vaccine distribution program.

"It addresses the need across the board," Poloncarz said.

That includes aid for schools, which would get $135 billion to help them reopen.

While it's unclear how that money would be divided, it would come as a blessing to schools in New York State, said Al Marlin, a spokesman for the New York State School Boards Association.

"Any money that's coming to K through 12 schools in any form is positive," Marlin said.

The politics

Of course, the most important question surrounding the Biden plan is: Can it pass?

The answer to that question is a qualified yes – and it's all because Democrats won two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia runoff elections earlier this month.

That gives the Senate a 50-50 partisan split, meaning Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will have the deciding vote whenever votes break along party lines.

Senate Republicans could still stop the stimulus plan unless 10 of them join Democrats in breaking a likely filibuster. And while Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, soon to be the Senate minority leader, hasn't weighed in yet on the Biden plan, the comments of other Republicans range from modestly critical to scathing.

Jacobs, an Orchard Park Republican, is in the modestly critical camp.

“I have continually advocated for a strong, targeted, and bipartisan response to Covid-19 – and I am encouraged that President-elect Biden has included funding in his plan to provide support to local governments," Jacobs said. "There are a number of concerning provisions in this proposal and I caution the President-elect against using Covid-19 relief legislation as a way to enact an expensive and unfocused partisan agenda. I look forward to seeing more details."

Republicans are sure to object to the proposal to raise the minimum wage, and to insist that the Biden package also address the concerns businesses have about pandemic-related lawsuits. But for now, some in the GOP are avoiding specific criticisms in favor of partisan rhetorical flourishes.

"President-elect Biden launches yet another economic blind buffalo that does nothing to save Main Street businesses, get people back to work or strengthen our economy," griped Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Rhetoric like that won't do anything to stop the Biden relief effort so long as Democrats remain united. That's because even if the measure can't garner bipartisan support in the Senate, the incoming Senate Majority Leader – Charles E. Schumer of New York – can pass it with a bare majority by using a parliamentary procedure called "reconciliation."

Schumer as well as Higgins are likely to press for at least one change: inclusion of the Restaurants Act, which would set up a $120 billion grant program aimed at saving neighborhood eateries that have been devastated by the pandemic.

But the incoming Senate leader, who has been discussing the relief bill with Biden, largely likes what he sees.

"The Biden-Harris team's emergency relief framework is the right approach," Schumer said on Twitter. "We will get right to work turning their vision into legislation that will pass both chambers and become law."

Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, like Schumer a New York Democrat, praised the Biden effort, too. It includes several measures that Gillibrand has been pushing separately, including that expansion of the public health workforce and the establishment of a paid leave program as well as state and local aid. 

She praised the plan not just for that reason, but also because it offers a comprehensive approach to the pandemic and its economic fallout.

"The American Rescue Plan demonstrates that President-elect Biden’s administration understands the urgency of this crisis," Gillibrand said.