New York Times: “By a voice vote, senators backed an amendment from Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, to ‘prohibit the increase of the federal minimum wage during a global pandemic.’ It was a signal that the wage hike would be difficult to pass in an evenly split Senate, where at least one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, is already on record opposing it.”

Larry Summers: “President Biden’s $1.9 trillion covid-19 relief plan, added to the stimulus measure Congress passed in December with the incoming administration’s strong support, would represent the boldest act of macroeconomic stabilization policy in U.S. history. Its ambition, its rejection of austerity orthodoxy and its commitment to reducing economic inequality are all admirable. It is imperative that safety-net measures for those suffering and investments in vaccination and testing be undertaken rapidly after the indefensible delays of the last months of the Trump administration.”

“Yet bold measures need to be accompanied by careful consideration of risks and how they can be mitigated. While the arguments for providing relief to those hurt by the economic fallout of the pandemic, investing in controlling the virus and supporting consumer demand are compelling, much of the policy discussion has not fully reckoned with the magnitude of what is being debated.”

Politico: “More than one in three jobless Americans — or nearly 4 million people — are now classified as long-term unemployed, which the Labor Department defines as being out of work for six months or more. And that total, which is expected to rise again when January jobs data is released on Friday, is likely an undercount: Combined with another 4 million who have stopped searching for work entirely, roughly one in 20 people who were working a year ago have now been shut out of the labor market for more than six months or dropped out altogether.”

“The phenomenon poses an obstacle to the recovery, since the more time a worker spends out of a job, the longer it takes to return to employment, studies show. The fear among many policymakers is that the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed will have trouble finding jobs even after the vaccine is distributed because they have spent so much time out of work — contributing to a prolonged period of heightened joblessness and, in turn, jeopardizing President Joe Biden’s goals of turning the economy around quickly.”

Politico: “Inside the White House, there is a belief that so much of Biden’s agenda is tied to the success of the Covid relief package — the most vital of which is containing the spread of coronavirus — that inaction would cripple the presidency and delay would endanger it. They also view the bill as critical to resolving some of the thornier issues they’ve confronted in their short time in office, including school reopenings, which would be accelerated with a massive resource infusion if the relief bill were to pass.”

“And so, on Wednesday, Biden got more directly involved in the process than he had been at any time prior.”

President Joe Biden urged House Democrats to “go big, not small” on a new COVID-19 relief package and to stick together as they sell his nearly $2 trillion stimulus plan to the American people, The Hill reports.

Said Biden: “We have to go big, not small. Every major poll shows the American people are with us.”

He added: “I’ll have your back. I ask that you have mine.”

Washington Post: “One proposal discussed by senior Democrats includes lowering the threshold for the payments to begin phasing out above $50,000 for single taxpayers, $75,000 for people who file as the heads of households, and $100,000 for married couples… The conversations are fluid and legislation has not been finalized.”

Playbook: “We would add that the Covid package is popular — people like getting hundreds of dollars in the mail! — and the White House is making the calculation that some Republicans will support the final package even if they didn’t influence it much. In 2001, George W. Bush got 58 Senate votes, including 12 Democrats, for his tax cut bill, when he only needed 50 because it was passed via reconciliation.”

David Leonhardt: “A president has only limited control over the economy. And yet there has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century. The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.”

“It’s true about almost any major indicator: gross domestic product, employment, incomes, productivity, even stock prices. It’s true if you examine only the precise period when a president is in office, or instead assume that a president’s policies affect the economy only after a lag and don’t start his economic clock until months after he takes office.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said that he does not support increasing the minimum age to $15 an hour—a critical roadblock to including the proposal in the final coronavirus relief bill, The Hill reports.

“U.S. economic growth will recover ‘rapidly’ and the labor market will return to full strength quicker than expected thanks to the vaccine rollout and a barrage of legislation enacted in 2020, according to a government forecast published Monday,” CNBC reports.

“Gross domestic product, or GDP, is expected to return to its pre-pandemic size by mid-2021 and the labor force is forecast to rebound to its pre-pandemic level in 2022.”

“Importantly, the CBO said its rosier projections do not assume any new stimulus, including President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan.”

“We can’t hold back… Trying to be per se fiscally responsible at this point in time with what we’ve got going on in this country. If we actually throw away some money right now, so what?”

— West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R), calling for a big stimulus package in a CNN interview.

“The Democratic push to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour has emerged as an early flashpoint in the fight for a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, testing President Joe Biden’s ability to bridge Washington’s partisan divides as he pursues his first major legislative victory,” the AP reports.

“Biden called for a $15 hourly minimum wage during his campaign and has followed through by hitching it to a measure that, among other things, calls for $1,400 stimulus checks and $130 billion to help schools reopen.”

The Upshot: “The administration’s proposal, when combined with the $900 billion in pandemic aid agreed to in December, would amount to a bigger surge of spending, both in absolute terms and relative to the depth of the nation’s economic hole, than has been attempted in modern American history.

“Mr. Biden’s proposal — or even more limited versions of it that appear to have a better shot of winning congressional approval — would pump enough money into the economy to, in effect, intentionally overheat it. Or at minimum it would push the limits of how fast the American economy can rev.”

“Democrats are discussing a path to bypass Republicans and approve an aggressive Covid-19 relief package on a party-line basis as prospects for bipartisan support for President Joe Biden’s top priority diminish,” NBC News reports.

“White House economic adviser Brian Deese and Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zientz held a call Thursday with Senate Democrats as they grapple with whether to cut a slimmed-down deal or use a process known as reconciliation to bypass the Senate’s 60-vote rule to avoid a filibuster.”

“Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated they will begin moving forward on a massive coronavirus package as soon as next week, with or without Republicans,” Politico reports.

“Schumer gave some of his strongest indications yet that this could happen soon, starting with passage of a budget resolution that unlocks reconciliation’s power. … Schumer also said that slashing the package in a major way isn’t going to happen.”

“The U.S. economy shrank by 3.5 percent last year as the novel coronavirus upended American business and households, making 2020 the worst year for U.S. economic growth since the depths of the Great Recession,” the Washington Post reports.

“This is the last GDP report from former president Donald Trump’s tenure. Until the pandemic, Trump was on track for an economic record that put him near the middle of the pack among recent presidents. But the covid-19 crisis has ensured that he is likely to have overseen the slowest economic growth of any president in the period since the Second World War.”