The Senate had used 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 coronavirus relief bill.

But Vice President Harris's tiebreaking vote the budget measure that was approved, also means Democrats will not need any Republican backing to pass the final package a za long as all Democrats senators back the bill with the details still to be worked out.

Speaking with Senate Democrats at the White House, President Biden signal 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, waken do too little waken do too little sputter.

But again, the end result is it's not just the macro economic impact on the economy and our ability to compete internationally.

It's people's lives really live, people are hurting and we can fix it straight to Washington.

Then, when we joined D W correspondent Oliver Salad, Welcome Oliver.

So what sort of things will this $1.9 trillion cover?

It's quite a big sum.

Phil and Joe Biden wants to tackle the effects off the pandemic.

So the economic crisis that the United States is suffering from right now.

So we have 1400 U.

S.

Dollars in direct aid for every American taxpayers are high earners are excluded from this money, 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 eight included for reopening the schools.

Here is quickly as possible.

Eso the strategy Really, That President Biden is following here in his first weeks off 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 now, no word of an increase in the U.

S.

Minimum wage, which was a key part of Joe Biden's the election platform.

Yeah, that's right.

He wanted $15 per hour as a minimum wage by 2025.

However, now the problem here is the U.

S Senate Andi, 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 on 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, uh, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi promise that this would be done and passed before March 15.

So it is not done as off now.

Of course, we know that the Democrats have the majorities in both chambers off the house.

Uh, Joe Biden is able to do that now without the help off the Republicans.

But of course he wants bipartisan support.

That is something that he promised also in his inauguration speech.

Eso in party wants to govern with the Republicans.

But off course, you also needs every Democratic vote in Senate, especially there, because the majority, as you know, is very slim.

It'd continues to be a very close call, just sort of slightly technical note.

Why is it that the Democrats don't need Republican support from this point?

Well, they usually need 60 votes in the 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 build with just a simple majority.

And that is enough if they use the vice president, Camilla Harris vote as a tie breaker.

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 day is the House that Democrats unprecedented step of removing a Republican congresswoman from her committee assignments.

So Democrats told Republicans to take disciplinary action against Marjorie Taylor Green because of her controversial Internet posts.

Or else they would.

Congresswoman Green 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 the 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.

Thes 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 comments that I liked in 2018, I wouldn't be standing here today.

Congressman Greene says this resolution could set a precedent for the future.

I hope it does.

I hope we're 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 Yays are 230 the nays are 199.

The resolution is adopted.

Oliver said that the bizarre ideas on Deacon Spirit see Siri's that that Marjorie Taylor, A Green has has talked about Andi liked on Facebook is long on bizarre.

But amongst those talking about school shootings and 9 11 being faked, this sounds that extraordinary and particularly egregious.

Well, yes, and it really shows also, if you look at how the Republican Party response 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, which is rather on the radical Mawr extreme side, Of course, following all this rhetoric off the last four years of President Trump's, uh, 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 off 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 are going forward, is it?

It's It's how they remain sort of true to traditional conservatives and while also accommodating the conspiracy theorists and the semi Racists and the insurrectionists who flocked 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 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 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 a House Committee's eh?

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 here 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.

Onda make a signal also, so it's a symbolic move.

But it's also 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 further significance off this particular vote in as much as we would normally expect the Republican Party to deal with membership with their members on their committees.

But the Democrats took this out of their hands.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And again, I mean, we have this divided party right now that we're looking at on Dove course.

Uh, the Democrats took it out of their hands.

This is unprecedented.

So there has been some criticism also by the Republican Party there afraid, of course, that this could be turned into a political weapon to remove any kind off, uh, 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 Thio, follow their principles and fight thes wrong informations and and conspiracy theories like Q and on and all of such that we've heard of the last years.

Eso 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 Sallet in Washington.