US President Joe Biden on Friday said that the number of COVID-19 deaths in the US was expected to surpass 600,000 and urged the US Congress to move fast on his US$1.9 trillion plan to battle the virus and provide economic relief to struggling Americans.
While Biden called for urgent passage of his “American Rescue Plan,” his efforts to get Congress to cooperate on his fast-paced agenda could be complicated by former US president Donald Trump’s looming impeachment trial in the US Senate.
Top Democratic lawmakers said that they planned to send the article of impeachment passed by the US House of Representatives to the Senate on Monday, triggering Trump’s trial in the body.
Photo: Reuters
“The virus is surging,” Biden told reporters at the White House before signing executive orders boosting food aid and speeding up stimulus payments to Americans.
“We’re at 400,000 dead, expected to reach well over 600,000. Families are going hungry. People are at risk of being evicted. Job losses are mounting again. We need to act now... We need to move fast,” he said.
Biden added that he was looking forward to working with both parties in Congress to “move quickly” on getting people help through his rescue plan.
“The bottom line is this: We’re in a national emergency. We’ve got to act like we’re in a national emergency,” he said.
Biden is having to push Congress for funding while simultaneously getting his government confirmed — US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin won Senate approval on Friday to become the first black Pentagon chief — and bracing for turmoil from the impeachment trial.
Although Biden’s latest executive orders on food aid and stimulus payments were modest in scale, they reinforced the message that Washington needs to step in decisively against the pandemic and related economic fallout.
Biden’s US$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan provides more than US$400 billion to tackle the pandemic along with additional funding for small businesses and direct relief payments to Americans.
Yet the Congress, having already passed two huge economic relief bills, is reluctant.
The president’s Democratic Party has only a small majority in the House and a razor-thin advantage in the Senate.
Biden is also relying on the Senate to hurry up and approve his cabinet nominations.
Brian Deese, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said Republicans and Democrats in Congress must find ways to manage the clashing issues.
“We are facing right now a period of multiple crises and what we need right now is to be able to act on multiple fronts,” he said.
Biden described the US as experiencing as a “once-in-a-century public health crisis” and the worst “job and economic crisis in modern history.”
“And the crisis is only deepening,” he said. “It’s not getting better. It’s deepening.”
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