Congress Passes $1.9T Relief Bill: Here’s What’s in It for Music Workers

The House of Representatives passed a landmark $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill on Wednesday (March 10), including a mixed bag of legislation for the music industry’s hard-hit freelance workforce.

The American Rescue Plan Act, which the Senate passed Saturday, is the third and most sweeping relief legislation of the pandemic, and it bears substantial changes since the House last voted on the legislation Feb. 27.

Some of those modifications will affect hard-hit freelancers in the music industry in ways both good and bad, though advocates for freelance music workers who were interviewed for this story say they are largely happy with the current version of the legislation, which President Joe Biden is expected to sign into law Friday.

“There’s a whole lot to celebrate in the bill,” says Kevin Erickson, director at the nonprofit Future of Music Coalition. “To begin with, it’s big. It’s not repeating the mistake of 2009 where the recovery package passed in response to the Great Recession was far too small. This is still too small, but there’s a lot of meaningful steps that we can build on.”

Mixed Results for Mixed Earners
Most prominently, the bill includes a $300 weekly federal pandemic unemployment compensation (FPUC) supplement — $100 less than in the original House bill. The change has been noted as a concession to moderate Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, and it will hit “mixed earners” who make a living through a combination of employee wages and freelance income especially hard.

Due to a flaw in the March 2020 CARES Act pandemic relief legislation, workers whose W-2 earnings qualified them for traditional unemployment benefits were deemed ineligible for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the system of state-level aid the bill created for freelancers. As a result, many freelancers’ unemployment benefit amounts were determined by their often far less substantial W-2 earnings, leaving them with only minuscule state-level benefits. Because of this, many in that situation saw the FPUC supplement — which was $600 a week under the CARES Act and reduced to $300 when it was extended at the end of 2020 — as a lifeline.

Advocates had expected the $400 FPUC benefit that the House established for the American Rescue Plan Act to remain intact when it emerged from the Senate, but Manchin reportedly threatened to vote against the package if the FPUC was not lowered.

“One hundred dollars a week is a big loss for a musician who is unable to work because of the pandemic,” says A2IM president and CEO Richard Burgess, who worked as an independent musician for many years and has been a vocal advocate of relief for freelancers.

The Senate bill does extend the $100 weekly mixed-earner unemployment compensation (MEUC) supplement — introduced in the second relief package passed by then-President Donald Trump in December 2020 — through September 6. That’s one week longer than the House bill. (South Dakota and Idaho opted out of offering the supplement to their residents when the December package passed.) While the $100 MEUC is an important concession to mixed-earners, its advocates had also lobbied senators to keep the federal unemployment benefit at the $400 level approved by the House. They argued that the $300 provided by the last package wasn’t enough, particularly given that lawmakers failed to fix the flaw in the CARES Act that led to mixed earners being shut out of PUA benefits in the first place.

U.S. Representatives Adam Schiff and Judy Chu attempted to fix that foundational flaw by introducing the Mixed Earner Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Act last July, but the bill was ultimately excluded from both the December relief package and the current legislation.

Sarah Howes, an independent attorney who does pro-bono work for artists, gig workers, freelancers and entrepreneurs affected by the pandemic, says advocates had also lobbied for the MEUC to be increased to $150 a week, but adds that the extension of the supplement counts as a win for mixed earners, who were all but ignored in the original CARES Act legislation passed in March 2020.

“We’re so grateful that we got included,” says Howes. “It gives some money, and it does make these people feel heard. I can tell you, when you’re in crisis, feeling heard is a huge part of it.”

Lauren Hancock, an attorney at D.C. law firm Barnes & Thornburg who sits on the board of directors at Songwriters of North America (SONA), agrees that while the relief bill falls short in some areas, it’s a valuable messaging tool for the future, particularly when it comes to freelancer issues. “[Having] all of this stuff…included in these COVID relief packages is great to get the issue on people’s radar,” she says.

Stimulus Checks: A Stopgap, Not a Solution
The Senate bill also extends the FPUC – which, like other pandemic unemployment assistance, had been slated to expire on March 14 – through September 6, also one week longer than in the House version of the legislation. It additionally includes $1,400 stimulus checks that will be sent to individuals making $75,000 or less and a maximum joint income of $150,000 for couples.

Howes says those stimulus checks will certainly help mixed earners pay down any debts they have accrued but, overall, she explains, they will not make up for the thousands of dollars of unemployment benefits that gig workers have lost. What’s really needed, she continues, is long-term relief for mixed earners who have been all but shut out of the unemployment system over the past year.

“There remain serious problems,” she says. “There are still some waiting for benefits and others who have been excluded from any unemployment support despite losing most or all of their income due to flaws in policy. We need to continue fixing these problems — with legislation, [Department of Labor] guidelines, state unemployment policy and technology modernization.”

In addition to permanent fixes to the unemployment system, Howes says Congress and the Biden administration also need to consider debt relief programs for mixed earners who have accumulated credit card debt, as well as refundable tax credits and grants for entrepreneurs whose businesses suffered losses.

Tax Relief, Health Care Subsidies and More
Among the other provisions that will benefit freelancer music workers in the bill are an increase in the per-child tax credit to $3,600 for kids under the age of six, and $3,000 for those six and older; and an increase in the Child and Dependent Care Credit, which covers 50% of eligible care expenses for children and other dependents, to a maximum of $4,000 for one dependent and $8,000 for two or more.

The American Rescue Plan Act would also forgive taxes on the first $10,200 of federal unemployment benefits for 2020 and provide a refund for anyone who has already paid them. It additionally provides additional subsidies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) and COBRA plans and a combined $40 billion in additional rent and mortgage assistance. The Senate also added an amendment to the House bill that will exempt all student loan forgiveness, including potential future student loan cancelation by Congress or the Biden administration, from federal taxation so long as that debt is forgiven by Jan 1, 2026. And it provides an additional $1.25 billion to the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, with another $840,000 allocated to staffing at the Small Business Administration (SBA), which is responsible for allocating those funds. The amendment to the SVOG will also allow venues to apply for and receive funds from the second round of Paycheck Protection Program loans, which closes applications on March 31. If venues receive these PPP2 funds as well as a venue grant, the amount of their PPP funds will be reduced from their awarded grant amount.

“Working families get a lot in this bill,” says Burgess, who adds that the legislation also “triple[s] the value of the Earned Income Tax Credit to over $1,500 and make[s] it easier for folks without children to get the benefit.” The bill contributes an additional $15 billion to Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), for which freelancers are eligible, he says.

Erickson is also heartened by the bill’s $3.5 billion allocation for block grants to address mental health and substance use, including $100 million for mental health workforce training. “Musicians face disproportionate rates of anxiety and depression and addiction even in good times,” he says. “The strain that our healthcare system is under has led to cutbacks in these kinds of treatment. Even though the ACA means that folks have coverage for mental health and substance abuse, there are real problems with provider shortages. This should help.”