The Senate early Friday passed a budget resolution that will clear the way for circumventing Republican opposition to a large COVID-19 aid measure.

The House plans to pass the Senate’s budget plan on Friday. It includes language that will allow the Senate to pass coronavirus aid with 51 votes rather than the usual 60 votes.

Key House Democrats plan to meet with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris Friday “to report on where we go from here,” on the package, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

“This was a giant first step,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said after the early morning vote.

The 51-50 vote took place after hours of debate and votes on dozens of amendments. The measure passed along party lines, and Harris cast the tiebreaking vote.

The Senate next week is scheduled to begin former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, which will likely prevent any other legislative business in the Senate until it is completed.

Schumer said the House and Senate now plan to bring a COVID-19 aid bill to the floor and pass it, but he did not give a timeline. Democrats won’t have to worry about GOP opposition.

Schumer said Democrats “had no choice” but to use the budget resolution to employ a tactic that skirts the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and likely GOP opposition, “given the problems facing America and the desire to move forward.”

The legislation is all but certain to model Biden’s $1.9 trillion package that he proposed last month. It may narrow the distribution of a new round of stimulus checks, however.

The checks will provide $1,400 to individuals and $2,800 to couples, but the legislation is likely to include a mechanism to exclude those with higher incomes.

The Senate passed a nonbinding but bipartisan amendment last night that would prohibit “upper-income taxpayers” from receiving new stimulus checks.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, told fellow lawmakers in a letter Friday morning that the House will begin writing the coronavirus aid package next week “so that we can finish our work before the end of February.”

Original Location: House Democrats meet with Biden on COVID-19 aid after Senate passes key budget measure