Democrats in the US Congress were set yesterday to try to push through expanded US$2,000 pandemic relief payments for Americans after US President Donald Trump backed down from a fight with lawmakers that could have shut down the federal government.
In a sudden reversal late on Sunday, Trump signed into law a US$2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package, restoring unemployment benefits to millions of Americans and providing funds to keep government agencies running.
Trump last week had demanded Congress change it to increase the size of stimulus checks from US$600 to US$2,000 while also cutting some other spending.
Photo: AFP
Democratic lawmakers, who have a majority in the US House of Representatives and have long wanted US$2,000 relief checks, hope to use a rare point of agreement with Trump to advance the proposal — or at least put Republicans on record against it — in a vote scheduled for yesterday.
Many of Trump’s fellow Republicans oppose the higher payments, and Trump might not have the influence to budge them. The issue appears unlikely to gain traction in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Many economists agree the financial aid in the bill should be bigger to get the economy moving again, but say that immediate support for Americans hit by COVID-19 lockdowns is still urgently needed.
With less than a month left in office, Trump is unlikely to get his fellow Republicans to back the extra money for individuals or persuade Democrats to accept spending cuts he says he wants elsewhere in the spending bill, particularly in foreign aid.
Unemployment benefits being paid out to about 14 million people through pandemic programs lapsed on Saturday, but would be restarted now that Trump has signed the bill.
The package includes US$1.4 trillion in spending to fund government agencies. If Trump had not signed the legislation, then a partial government shutdown would have begun today that would have put millions of government workers’ incomes at risk.
The relief package also extends a moratorium on evictions that was due to expire on Dec. 31, refreshes support for small business payrolls, provides funding to help schools re-open and aid for the transport industry and vaccine distribution.
Lawmakers were also yesterday to seek to override Trump’s recent veto of a US$740 billion bill setting policy for the US Department of Defense. If successful, it would be the first veto override of Trump’s presidency.
Trump said he vetoed the legislation, which has passed every year since 1961, because he objected to liability protections for social media companies unrelated to national security and did not want to rename military bases named after generals who fought for the pro-slavery Confederacy during the Civil War.
Although his previous eight vetoes were all upheld, advisers said this one looked likely to be overridden. The bill passed both houses of Congress with margins greater than the two-thirds majorities that would be needed to override the president’s veto.
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