Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans in limbo as Donald Trump rages

Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet will expire at midnight tonight (US time) unless US President Donald Trump signs a bill. Year-end Covid relief and expense plan that had been deemed a closed deal prior to his sudden objections. .

Trump’s refusal to sign the bipartisan package as he demands higher aid payments from Covid and complains of wasteful spending could also force the federal government to shut down when money runs out at 12:01 on Tuesday amid a pandemic.

“It’s a game of chess and we are pawns,” said Lanetris Haines, a single, self-employed mother of three in South Bend, Indiana, who could lose her weekly $ 129 ($ 180) unemployment benefit unless Trump signs the package or succeeds in its unlikely quest for change.

Washington has been reeling since Trump threw the package into limbo after it had already garnered wide approval in both houses of the US Congress and after the White House assured Republican leaders that Trump would support it.

Instead, he has attacked the bill’s plan to provide aid payments of US $ 600 ($ 840) to most Americans, insisting that it should be US $ 2,000 ($ 2,800).

House Republicans quickly rejected that idea during a rare Christmas Eve session. But Trump has not moved.

US President-elect Joe Biden asked Trump to sign the bill immediately, as two federal programs that provide unemployment assistance are about to expire.

“It’s the day after Christmas, and millions of families don’t know if they will be able to make ends meet due to President Donald Trump’s refusal to sign an economic relief bill passed by Congress with an overwhelming bipartisan majority,” Biden . it said in a statement.

He accused Trump of an “abdication of responsibility” that has “devastating consequences.”

“I’ve been talking to people who are afraid they will be thrown out of their homes over the Christmas holidays, and it still could be if we don’t sign this bill,” said Democrat Debbie Dingell.

Lauren Bauer, an economics fellow at the Brookings Institution, has estimated that 11 million people would lose aid from the programs immediately without additional aid; Millions more would exhaust other unemployment benefits in a few weeks.

While payments could be received retroactively, any gap means more hardship and uncertainty for Americans who have already dealt with bureaucratic delays, often draining much of their savings to stay afloat while they wait for payments to begin.

Trump, meanwhile, has spent his final days in the office playing golf and tweeting angrily as he refuses to accept his loss to Biden in the Nov.3 election.

Today, he again lashed out at members of his own party for not joining his quest to try to overturn the election results with unsubstantiated claims of massive electoral fraud that have been repeatedly rejected by the courts.

“If a Democratic presidential candidate had a rigged and stolen election, with evidence of such acts at a level never seen before, Democratic senators would consider it an act of war and would fight to the death,” he criticized. He said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Republicans “just want to let it go. NO FIGHT!”

The president appeared to encourage his supporters to gather in Washington DC on January 6, the day Congress counts the Electoral College vote, though a similar event last month escalated into violence, with several people stabbed in the streets of the capital.

In addition to freezing unemployment benefits, Trump’s inaction on the bill would lead to the expiration of eviction protections and suspend a new round of subsidies for worst-hit businesses, restaurants and theaters, along with money to help schools and vaccine distribution.

The relief is also attached to a $ 1.4 trillion government funding bill to keep the federal government running.