Donald Trump signs the Covid-19 spending and relief bill | Donald trump

Donald Trump signed the Covid-19 relief and spending bill after days of delays, avoiding a government shutdown in the middle of a pandemic.

The announcement Sunday night after Republicans urged him to act following his refusal to sign the bill, a decision that meant millions of Americans lost unemployment assistance.

Trump caught members on both sides by surprise and disrupted months of negotiations when he demanded last week that the package, already approved by the House and Senate by wide margins and believed to have Trump’s support, be reviewed for include larger aid checks and reduced expenses.

But on Sunday night, Trump issued a statement that he had signed the bill, saying it was his “responsibility to protect the people of our country from the devastation and economic hardship” caused by the coronavirus.

“As president, I have told Congress that I want much less spending and more money for the American people in the form of checks for $ 2,000 per adult and $ 600 per child.

“I will sign the omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes it clear to Congress that waste items must be eliminated. I will send back to Congress a version with red lines, article by article, accompanied by the formal request for rescission to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill.

“I am signing this bill to restore unemployment benefits, stop evictions, provide rental assistance, add money for PPP, return our airline workers to work, add substantially more money for vaccine distribution, and much more. plus”.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell welcomed the measure.

Equity markets in Asia surged on the news that Trump had signed the bill, and US equity futures were up 0.4%.

Faced with mounting economic difficulties and the spread of disease, lawmakers urged Trump on Sunday to sign the legislation immediately and then have Congress give him extra help. In addition to unemployment benefits and support payments to families, there is money for vaccine distribution, businesses, and public transportation systems that lack cash. Protections against evictions are also at stake.

It was not immediately clear why Trump changed his mind when his resistance to the massive legislative package promised a chaotic final stretch of his presidency.
White House officials have been quiet about Trump’s thinking, but a source familiar with the situation cited by Reuters said some aides had urged him to give in because they saw no point in refusing.

Earlier Sunday, Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said he understood that Trump “wants to be remembered for advocating for big checks, but the danger is that he will be remembered for chaos, misery and erratic behavior if he allows this to expire.” .

Toomey added: “So I think the best thing to do, as I said, is to sign this and then defend the subsequent legislation.”

The same point was echoed by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who has criticized Trump’s pandemic response and his efforts to undo the election results. “I just stopped guessing what to do next,” he said.

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said there was too much at stake for Trump to “play this old game of change.”

“I don’t get the point,” he said. “I don’t understand what is being done, why, unless it’s just to create chaos and show power and be upset that you lost the election.”

Washington has been reeling since Trump approved the deal, without warning, after it garnered wide approval in both houses of Congress and after the White House assured Republican leaders that Trump would support it.

The bill had been unsigned on his desk since Christmas Day when the president, who remained silent during weeks of intense negotiations, spent the weekend at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach.

Instead, he attacked the bill’s plan to provide $ 600 Covid-19 relief checks to most Americans, insisting it should be $ 2,000, and disagreed with the spending included in a bill of $ 1.4 trillion government funding bill attached to keep the federal government running through September.

And already, his opposition has had consequences, as two federal programs that provided unemployment assistance expired on Saturday.

Lauren Bauer of the Brookings Institution had calculated that at least 11 million people would lose aid immediately as a result of Trump not signing the legislation; Millions more would exhaust other unemployment benefits in a few weeks.

How and when people are affected by the lapse depends on the state they live in, the program they trust, and when they applied for benefits.

In some states, people with regular unemployment insurance will continue to receive payments under a program that extends benefits when the unemployment rate crosses a certain threshold, said Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank. .

About 9.5 million people, however, were dependent on the pandemic unemployment assistance program that fully expired on Saturday. That program made unemployment insurance available to the self-employed, concert workers, and others who are not normally eligible. After receiving their last checks, those recipients will not be able to request further assistance, Stettner said.

Joe Biden, who won the November presidential election and will be sworn in as Trump’s successor on January 20, charged him with an “abdication of responsibility” in a statement Saturday.

Disputes over the aid bill come as the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen in the US, and medical experts join Biden in predicting that the darkest days are yet to come.

“It’s very possible that we will see a post-seasonal increase, in the sense of Christmas, New Years,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s chief of infectious diseases, told CNN Sunday.