Biden's 1st 100 days live updates: Senate passes COVID relief bill along party lines
The final vote was 50-49.
Today is Day 46 of the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Latest headlines:
Biden sets sights on infrastructure
Biden, Harris, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg meet with bipartisan House members in the Oval Office this afternoon. As Biden gets ready for his final push for COVID-19 relief, he is setting his sights on his next big legislative goal: infrastructure.
But tackling that will be no small feat for Biden. Infrastructure was something former President Donald Trump wanted to tackle, even pitching a $1.5 trillion plan, but was never able to achieve. The American Society of Civil Engineers released the 2021 Infrastructure Report Card this week, published every four years, and gave American infrastructure a C- grade for the first time in 20 years. That’s up from a D+ in 2017.
After that meeting, the president will participate in a virtual call to congratulate the NASA Perseverance team on the successful Mars landing. White House press secretary Jen Psaki will hold a press briefing at 12:45 p.m., and will be joined by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough.
House passes massive police reform bill named for George Floyd
The House passed a massive police reform bill late Wednesday on a party line vote, 219-213. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is aimed at preventing police misconduct and was named after George Floyd, a Black man who died last summer in Minnesota at the hands of police.
Two Democrats voted against the bill: Reps. Ron Kind of Wisconsin and Jared Golden of Maine. One Republican supported the bill: Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas, but he said later on Twitter that it was an accident and that he had corrected the record to reflect his opposition to the legislation.
The House was supposed to vote on the bill Thursday, but leadership moved up the vote amid new threats aimed at the Capitol.
The bill would establish a national standard for the operation of police departments, mandate data collection on police encounters, reprogram existing funds to invest in transformative community-based policing programs and streamline federal law to prosecute excessive force and establish independent prosecutors for police investigations. The measure would also ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants and requires that deadly force be used only as a last resort and requires officers to employ de-escalation techniques first.
The bill now heads to the Senate.
-ABC News' Mariam Khan
Biden to Dems: 'speak up and speak out' about COVID relief plan
Speaking virtually to the House Democratic Caucus Wednesday afternoon, Biden thanked his fellow Democrats for stepping up for Americans amid the COVID-19 pandemic and urged them to keep working to get the coronavirus relief plan to his desk for approval.
In a knock to his close friend and the president he served under, Biden said not to repeat the misstep President Barack Obama made in 2009 when he “didn’t adequately explain” the benefits of the American Recovery Act in 2009 to dig the U.S. out of the Great Recession.
“The economists told us we literally saved America from a depression. But we didn't adequately explain what we had done," Biden said. "Barack was so modest he didn't want to take, as he said, 'a victory lap.' I kept saying, tell people what we did. He said, 'we don't have time. I’m not going to take a victory lap.' And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”
Biden also said a win for Democrats over this relief bill, will also help them down the road as they get ready to focus on immigration reform and infrastructure.
-ABC News' Justin Gomez
Raimondo sworn in as commerce secretary
Gina Raimondo was sworn in as commerce secretary by Vice President Kamala Harris in a ceremony Wednesday night.
Before reading the oath, Harris asked about Raimondo's family and checked to make sure they were on the video conference before starting, according to a report from a reporter who attended the event.