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WASHINGTON: Top Capitol negotiators sealed a deal Sunday (December 20) on a nearly $ 1 trillion COVID-19 financial aid package, finally delivering aid to long-overdue businesses and individuals and providing money to deliver vaccines to a nation eager for them.
The deal, announced by Senate leaders, would establish temporary supplemental unemployment benefits of $ 300 per week and direct stimulus payments of $ 600 for most Americans, along with a new round of subsidies for the hardest hit businesses. and money for schools, health care providers, and tenants facing eviction.
The House was expected to vote on the legislation very late on Sunday or Monday and action from the Senate would follow. Lawmakers are eager to get out of Washington and close out a tumultuous year.
A major breakthrough came Saturday night in a fight over the emergency powers of the Federal Reserve that was settled by top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York and conservative Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. That led to a final round of negotiations.
The final settlement is the largest spending measure yet. It combines COVID-19 relief with a US $ 1.4 trillion government funding plan and many other unrelated measures in taxes, health, infrastructure and education.
Approval draws closer as coronavirus cases and deaths rise and evidence accumulates that the economy is struggling.
The late decisions would limit the $ 300-per-week unemployment benefit bonus – half the federal supplemental unemployment benefit provided in March under the CARES Act – to 10 weeks instead of 16 weeks as before. The direct stimulus payment of $ 600 for most people is also half of the March payment, subject to the same income limits where a person’s payment begins to phase out after $ 75,000.
President Donald Trump supports, in particular, the push to provide more direct payments. “DO IT,” he said in a tweet Saturday night.
It would be the first significant legislative response to the pandemic since the $ 1.8 trillion CARES Act was passed virtually unanimously in March.
READ: Comment: US on the cusp of the vicious cycle of COVID-19
The legislation was paralyzed by months of dysfunction, posturing and bad faith. But the talks turned serious last week when lawmakers on both sides finally faced a deadline to act before leaving Washington for Christmas.
Meanwhile, with the government shutdown deadline looming at midnight Sunday, lawmakers faced the reality of the need to enact another temporary spending bill, the second in as many days, to avoid the shutdown of non-essential activities by federal agencies on Monday.
Lawmakers had hoped to avoid that step, but progress slowed on Saturday when Toomey pushed for a provision to shut down the Fed’s credit facilities. Democrats and the White House said it was drafted too broadly and would have tied the hands of the incoming Biden administration, but Republicans supported Toomey’s position.
The Fed’s emergency programs made loans to small and medium-sized businesses and bought state and local government bonds. Those bond purchases facilitated borrowing for those governments, at a time when their finances were under pressure from job losses and healthcare costs from the pandemic.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last month that those programs, along with two that bought corporate bonds, would be closed by the end of the year, prompting an initial objection from the Fed. Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law Passed after the Great Recession, the Fed can only establish emergency programs with the support of the Secretary of the Treasury.
Toomey said the emergency powers were designed to stabilize capital markets at the height of the pandemic this spring and would expire at the end of the month anyway. Democrats said Toomey was trying to limit the Fed’s ability to boost the economy, just as President-elect Joe Biden was preparing to take office.
The virus aid deal would provide more than $ 300 billion in aid to businesses, as well as an additional $ 300 a week for the unemployed and renewal of state benefits that would otherwise expire just after Christmas. It included direct payments of US $ 600 to individuals; vaccine distribution funds; and money for tenants, schools, the Postal Service, and people who need food assistance.
The government-wide appropriations bill would fund agencies until next September. That measure is likely to provide a final installment of $ 1.4 billion for Trump’s border wall between the United States and Mexico as a condition of obtaining his signature.
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