Day 49: "110% confident." - a podcast by Matt Kiser

1/ House Democrats plan to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package Wednesday and send it to Biden so he can sign it before key unemployment aid programs expire on Sunday. Despite united Republican opposition and a narrow Democratic majority, Nancy Pelosi said she is confident they have the votes to pass one of Congress’s largest-ever economic relief bills. House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries said he was “110% confident” the package will pass. Millions of Americans are expected to receive direct payments of up to $1,400 this month. Expanded unemployment benefits would also be extended through Sept. 6 at $300 a week. The “American Rescue Plan” will also increase the tax break to $3,000 for every child age 6 to 17 and $3,600 for every child under the age of 6. (Politico / Washington Post / CNN / CNBC / ABC News)

• Biden’s won’t out his name on the next round of stimulus checks in an effort to speed distribution. Distribution of an earlier round of coronavirus stimulus checks were delayed because Trump decided to add his name to the memo line of the checks. (New York Times / Bloomberg)

2/ The coronavirus relief bill will expand subsidies for health plans under the Affordable Care Act, making health insurance affordable for 1.3 million more Americans who could not afford insurance under the original law. The changes, however, will last only for two years. (New York Times / Associated Press)

3/ Since the pandemic, about 700,000 mothers have dropped out of the U.S. workforce in states where most students are learning from home. The participation rate of mothers in the labor force was about 18 percentage points lower than fathers’ before the pandemic. Last year, the gap widened by 5 points in states offering mostly remote instruction. About 10 million mothers living with their school-age children were unemployed in January, roughly 1.4 million more than in the same period last year. Separately, a national study found that younger children have fallen behind on reading skills during the pandemic. Second graders were 26% behind where they would have been, absent the pandemic, in their ability to read aloud accurately and quickly. Third graders were 33% behind. (Bloomberg / New York Times)

4/ More than 3,400 migrant children are in Customs and Border Protection custody – triple the number two weeks ago. More than 1,360 of the children have been detained in border facilities longer than the maximum 72 hours permitted by law despite being referred for placement in shelters by Homeland Security. Of those, 169 children are younger than 13. ...

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