 The House has approved the Senate's version of Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief package and it is now officially headed to his desk and he's expected to sign it this Friday. So I want to talk through some of the key provisions here. This is a gigantic bill, so we obviously can't cover all of it, but I want to talk about the good, the shortcomings and what this bill could have been if progressives in Congress actually held their ground. So here's what's in the bill that I think you might want to know about. As Sahil Kapoor of NBC News explains, it includes $1,400 stimulus checks, not the $2,000 stimulus checks that Joe Biden promised, $300 a week jobless benefits for those on unemployment insurance, $3,000 to $3,600 in cash for kids, $34 billion for Affordable Care Act subsidies, 100 percent for Cobra subsidies, $350 billion for state and local aid, $14 billion for vaccine distribution and $25 billion for rental aid. And this may not apply to you, but it is important to know Jeff Stein from the Washington Post points out if you have a baby any time in 2021, you qualify for the $1,400 per kid once you file your 2022 tax returns. This is what an aide told him now, not included in this bill is a moratorium on evictions, but Joe Biden can actually do that via executive order. So I don't necessarily think that that is make or break. But what is disappointing is the lack of any student debt cancellation whatsoever. And there is no $15 an hour minimum wage. It was removed because Democrats wanted it removed. You know who. Now this comes at a time when it is desperately needed as soon as possible, because Jeff Stein adds over seven days at the end of February, 14 percent of adults with kids did not have enough to eat. Now by contrast over the full 12 months of 2019, only 4 percent of adults with kids reported not having enough to eat. But here's how the bill can help. So overall it's projected to lower poverty by 5 percent. So poverty falls by 42 percent for black Americans, 39 percent for Hispanic Americans and 34 percent for white Americans. Now I would argue that in the richest country on the planet, we can afford easily to fully eradicate poverty and also include an extra $100 per week to people on unemployment so that way instead of getting 300, they're getting 400, we can include a $15 an hour minimum wage. So you know, obviously there could have been more, but still I don't want to detract from what this bill does because it does actually do a lot. And Matt Bruneck, who is a trusted leftist, he actually believes that this bill, at least ideologically speaking, is a watershed moment when it comes to the fight against poverty. And he explains why that's the case, particularly as it relates to the temporary change to the child tax credit and earned income tax credit. He writes, the earned income tax credit was reformed as follows. The maximum benefit for a childless EITC was increased from $543 to $1,500. Eligibility for the earned income tax credit was expanded from ages 25 to 64 to ages 19 and above. The child tax credit was reformed as follows. The maximum benefit was increased from $2,000 per child to $3,600 for children below the age of six and $3,000 for children ages six and above. The child tax credit benefit phase in which excluded the poorest children from the benefit was eliminated. These reforms contain a major ideological watershed. In eliminating the child tax credit benefit phase in, we finally overcame the 25-year bipartisan consensus that held that very poor people should not be eligible for cash benefits. Arguably, we overcame that consensus last year when the first two rounds of stimulus checks were available for the first time to the poorest Americans. But those checks did not get scanned in the political discourse as being a revolution in welfare state thinking, while the child tax credit reform, even though it is also just for one year, did get scanned that way. So even though this is just a temporary change set to expire, what he's arguing is that this does basically amount to a paradigm shift in the way that we think about these sort of things because the poorest children were excluded because there was always this mindset in DC that if you give the poorest people this benefit, well, we're kind of like incentivizing bad behavior. We're incentivizing laziness when they should be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Like, we've heard the arguments on Fox News, but what Matt Brunig is saying is that this bill for the first time in a very long time actually changes that way of thinking. And we kind of saw the way that this played out when Roe Kahn made his speech on the House floor basically making this argument. This bill is historic because it buries the myth that the cause of childhood poverty is a lack of character or a lack of hard work or a lack of love. The bill affirms the simple truth that the cause of poverty is a lack of income to cover basic necessities. No child in America should be deprived of food, of medicine, of clothing, or of education because of the accident of birth. That is what this bill stands for. It represents and marks an ideological revolution on behalf of justice. So that is really encouraging to see. And this bill does have some much needed relief to people who desperately needed. Now again, the $1,400 direct cash payments should have been $2,000 because that's exactly what Joe Biden and Democrats promised. And there should have been a lot more. There should have been the $15 an hour minimum wage. But the reason why there wasn't more, I would argue, is because progressives, they didn't do enough. They pushed back. They sent a letter to Joe Biden demanding that he include the $15 an hour minimum wage. But they didn't actually flex their muscles in the way that conservative Democrats did. So as Breonna Joy Gray points out, thinking about how Joe Manchin is willing to take public heat and withhold his vote to hurt millions of Americans, but progressives won't withhold their votes to get millions of Americans a $15 an hour minimum wage. And she's exactly correct here. She's exactly correct. Had progressives in the House of Representatives withheld their vote for this bill and refused to support it, if it did not include a $15 an hour minimum wage, then that could have elevated this issue. If they actually made their demands, then imagine like the even bigger difference that this bill would have made materially on people's lives. A $15 an hour minimum wage would have given millions of Americans a much needed increase in their wages. So I would argue that progressives should have withheld their votes, refused to support this legislation if they didn't get what they demanded. Now the counter argument to this is, well, I mean, we saw the stats. We see how many people are suffering. We know that direct cash payments and relief is needed like right this second. So isn't it immoral to potentially like postpone this bill to get your demand? And I would argue, one, that's a flawed way of thinking because that shifts the culpability away from the conservative Democrats, Joe Manchin, Kirsten Sinema, who denied this in the first place. And furthermore, this is basically a now or never moment for the $15 an hour minimum wage, because if you try to pass it with 60 votes, that's not going to happen. You could barely get 50 votes, the 51 votes if we include Kamala Harris to pass this legislation, to pass a $15 an hour minimum wage. So if you don't put it in a must pass bill, a bill that all Democrats want, even conservative Democrats, you're not going to get a $15 an hour minimum wage increase. And that's an issue. Progressives didn't put up a big enough fight. They didn't use the leverage that they have. You know, it didn't take very many progressives to be able to block this legislation, but they chose not to do that. They got rolled. I mean, conservative Democrats got what they wanted, whereas progressive Democrats did not get what they wanted. And again, I don't want to accuse them of being bad people because they did see the need in getting this out immediately. But the issue is they're never going to be able to actually have a say or dictate policy outcomes. They'll never have any input whatsoever. And conservative Democrats will have all of the input in the world when it comes to these pieces of legislation. If they don't actually bind together and get more savvy and play politics. But again, it's tough to do that when you know what's at stake. So whatever the next piece of legislation that is going to be passed using budget reconciliation comes up, if they're serious about the $15 an hour minimum wage, they can't not play hardball here. They can't not block the legislation outright. Otherwise, we're not going to get a $15 an hour minimum wage. And look, in 2021, $15 an hour is wholly insufficient. It needs to be $20, $25 an hour at this point. So we have to, at a minimum, get a $15 an hour minimum wage. And that requires progressives actually fighting other Democrats. Because as it stands now, the balance of power in Congress tips heavily in favor of individuals like Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema. And that is because they play hardball, they'll block legislation and refuse to support legislation that Joe Biden is pushing if they don't get what they want. So I think that progressives need to learn from the conservative Democrats when it comes to their tactics and try to replicate that in the house where they actually do have a lot more progressives who support, you know, really bold policy like $15 an hour minimum wage. So overall, this is important legislation. It's desperately needed. It funds state and local governments. It provides survival checks to people, even though it should be $2,000. And overall, it's good. It tackles poverty. It really will make a material difference in people's lives. In a really concrete way. And that matters, but it could have been bettered and we have to remember this and grow, learn from this experience and the shortcomings of this bill and try to tweak our approach for progressives in Congress to actually use the leverage that we have to improve this bill and improve the lives of Americans. And I'll leave that there.