democrats in the united states are
asserting their control in congress
to set the agenda and the tone in
washington
they now control the senate and use
their majority for the first time in the
early hours of friday morning
to push ahead with president biden's
plan for a 1.9
trillion corona virus relief bill with
vice president harris's tie-breaking
vote the budget measure that was
approved also means democrats will not
need any republican backing to pass the
final package
as long as all democrat senators backed
the bill with the details still to be
worked out
speaking with senate democrats at the
white house president biden signaled
that he was pleased that the path was
now open
to going big on spending to help
americans overcome the pandemic
and its economic effects we can't do too
much here
we can do too little we can do too
little and sputter but again the end
result is
it's not just the macroeconomic impact
on the economy and our ability to
compete internationally
it's people's lives real live people are
hurting
and we can fix it straight to washington
then where we joined dw correspondent
oliver salad welcome oliver so what sort
of things will this
1.9 trillion dollars cover
yeah it's quite a big sum uh phil and uh
joe biden wants to
tackle the effects of the pandemic so
the economic crisis that
the united states is suffering from
right now so we have 1
400 us dollars in direct aid for every
american taxpayers
high earners are excluded from this
money
and then also several fields so eight
with regards to food
the unemployment insurance will be
extended until the end of the year
small businesses health insurance also
rental assistance if you can't
pay your rent anymore and then of course
there's aid included for reopening
the schools here as quickly as possible
so the strategy really that president
biden is following here in his first
weeks
of his presidency is to focus on the
pandemic and on the fallout the economic
fallout here
and of course no word about trump and
his looming impeachment trial
right and no word of an increase in the
u.s minimum wage which was a key part of
joe biden's election platform
yeah that's right he wanted 15 u.s
dollars per hour as a minimum wage
by 2025 however now the problem here
is the u.s senate and that is backing
the stimulus package but the senate is
rejecting
this minimum wage that's a small setback
for president biden
especially because it goes down to a
republican proposal
and that now prohibits the minimum wage
to be increased during the times of a
pandemic and that found
bipartisan support the concern here is
that this minimum wage would be a burden
for small businesses that they could
eventually
not make ends meet anymore with this
minimum wage imposed
okay so as far as the stimulus bill is
concerned is that
job done now for joe biden can he relax
and move on to something else
well the sentence has approved that
budget plan first of all
and the house approved it with a final
vote just a little while ago so that
paves the way now
for this relief package to be signed
eventually
speaker of the house nancy pelosi
promised that this would be
done and passed before march 15. so it
is not done
as of now of course we know that the
democrats have the majorities in both
chambers of the house joe biden is
able to do that now without the help of
the republicans but of course he wants
bipartisan support that is
something that he promised also in his
inauguration speech
so in part he wants to govern with the
republicans but of course he also needs
every democratic vote in senate
especially there because the majority as
you know is very slim and it continues
to be a very close call
and just on a slightly technical note
why is it that the democrats
don't need republican support from this
point
well they usually need 60 votes in
senate
to pass such a bill the democrats
currently have 50 so that's not enough
and then the senate passed a so-called
budget resolution that's a procedural
step it gets a bit complicated here
but essentially it allows democrats to
pass the relief bill with just a simple
majority
and that is enough if they use the vice
president kemal harris's vote
as a tiebreaker and so therefore the
democrats do not need the republicans
to pass this legislation okay so the
other big vote being talked about in
washington today
is the house democrats unprecedented
step
of removing a republican congresswoman
from her committee assignments
so democrats told republicans to take
disciplinary action against
marjorie taylor greene because of her
controversial
internet posts or else they would
congresswoman greene advocated for the
execution of a leader of this house
she advocated for the execution of
former president obama
she encouraged violence against law
enforcement and has a long record of
racist anti-semitic and islamophobic
comments
she spread cruel conspiracy theories
even claiming their horrific mass school
shootings in sandy hook and parkland
were staged i never said any of these
things
since i have been elected for congress
these were words of the past i was
allowed to believe
things that weren't true and i would ask
questions questions about them and talk
about them
and that is absolutely what i regret
because if it weren't for the facebook
post and and comments that i liked
in 2018 i wouldn't be standing here
today
congresswoman green says this resolution
could set a precedent for the future
i hope it does i hope we are setting a
clear
standard for what we will not tolerate
anyone who suggests putting a bullet in
the head of a member
shouldn't serve on any committee period
never
before in the history of this house
has the majority abused its power in
this way
the yeas are 230 and the nays are 199.
the resolution is adopted
oliver salad the the the bizarre ideas
and and conspiracy theories that that
marjorie taylor
green has has talked about and
liked on facebook is long and bizarre
but amongst those
talking about school shootings and 9 11
being faked this sounds
extraordinary and particularly egregious
well yes and it really shows also if you
look at how
the republican party responds to her
then
how the rift is in the republican party
right now because it really depends
to whom you speak there there were some
11
house republicans who voted to remove
her but then you have this other
republican party
who's which is rather on the radical
more extreme side of course
following all this rhetoric of the last
four years of president trump's
term and they are cheering for her of
course and she also is very supportive
of donald trump
and the most important aspect perhaps is
that she still has the support
of the party leadership the republican
leader in the house of representative
kevin mccarthy
is still defending her okay so this is
going to be a big problem for
republicans
going forward isn't it it's how they
remain sort of true to traditional
conservatism while also accommodating
the conspiracy theorists and the
semi-racists and the insurrectionists
who flock to them
because of donald trump
absolutely yes and this is basically one
of the core
questions that we're looking at right
now when it comes to the future of the
republican party the big question will
be
how will the republican party be able to
move forward right now you can see
with this uh with this republican
congresswoman
in particular that the party is very
much divided and that there are two
essentially two sides that cannot come
to terms how to move on should they
rather
stick with donald trump should they
stick with conspiracy theories or should
they move on
and embrace uh old democratic values and
this is going to be very interesting to
watch in the next weeks and months and
years to come
okay so the vote that we're talking
about that happened on thursday this was
to remove
marjorie taylor green from a couple of
house committees
um so what is the significance of these
sanctions
well it's a very significant move by the
democrats in particular because
the democrats want to make clear her
that they do not tolerate
if congress people are in such important
positions in such important assignments
so they wanted to make clear they don't
accept this
and make a signal also so it's a
symbolic move but it's also a move
for the records because it essentially
shows very well where each individual
republican
congress person stands so who supports
her
and who doesn't and that became very
clear in this vote here
okay and and further significance uh
of this particular vote in as much as we
would normally expect
the republican party to deal with
um membership with their members on
their committees
but the the democrats took this out of
their hands
yeah that's exactly right and and and
again i mean we have this
divided party right now that we're
looking at and and of course
the democrats took it out of their hands
this is unprecedented so
there has been some criticism also by
the republican party they are
afraid of course that this could be
turned into a political weapon to remove
any kind of a person that you
do not like on the other side of the
political aisle of course but then again
the democrats say that they want to
follow their principles
and fight uh these uh wrong informations
and and conspiracy theories
like q anon and and all of such that
we've heard of the last years
so basically this is the stance that the
democrats have here
and that's exactly what they have put
forward all right thank you for that
oliver salat in washington
you