US President Joe Biden and top aides are planning a nationwide tour to sell Americans on the benefits of a US$1.9 trillion COVID-19 pandemic relief bill.
Biden is to launch the effort with a White House ceremony today to sign the bill, one of the largest economic stimulus measures in US history.
His administration then plans to take its sales pitch on the road, with Biden visiting Pennsylvania on Tuesday next week, and US Vice President Kamala Harris heading to California, Colorado and Nevada on Monday and Tuesday, White House officials said.
Photo: AP
The massive legislative package, which received final congressional approval on Wednesday, passed with Democratic majorities in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, but no Republican votes.
The bill is to send US$1,400 checks to millions of households, extend unemployment benefits, and put billions of dollars into state budgets and industries after a year of lockdowns and other restrictions.
However, Biden is wary of what befell former US president Barack Obama, whom Biden served as vice president.
In 2009, Obama spent little time promoting a more than US$800 billion stimulus program that he and fellow Democrats pushed through Congress amid a deep recession.
The measure included stimulus checks, tax cuts, and other support for businesses, workers and unemployed people.
However, Republicans, who almost unanimously opposed the measure, captured the House in 2010, narrowed Democrats’ lead in the Senate and torpedoed most of Obama’s policies.
“We didn’t do enough to explain to the American people what the benefits were” in 2009, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, a veteran of the Obama administration, told reporters on Wednesday.
Joshua Karp, a Democratic strategist, said that it was important for Democrats to “go out and tell people about what this bill does and who this bill helps.”
“There is real reason for hope, folks,” Biden said on Wednesday. “There is real reason for hope, I promise you.”
The White House plans to put surrogates and senior administration officials on local TV across the country, and mobilize more than 400 mayors and governors to talk about what the plan means for them and their communities.
“At every step of the way, we’re going to communicate how this will make their lives better,” deputy White House chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon said in an internal staff memo.
In 2009, the US economy was still contracting as the ripples of a banking crisis spread.
The Biden stimulus comes as the economy is forecast to grow as much as 7 percent this year as the country reopens.
Republicans say that the Democrats never really made a serious effort to try to win some of them over, and that voters will sour over the size of the legislation and deepened deficit spending.
US Representative Liz Cheney previewed how her party might attack the measure, saying in a statement that only a small fraction of the US$1.9 trillion was aimed for pandemic relief, and warning it might lead to tax increases.
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
‘INCREDIBLY TROUBLESOME’: Hours after a judge questioned the legality of invoking a wartime power to deport immigrants, the president denied signing the proclamation The US on Friday said it was terminating the legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, giving them weeks to leave the country. US President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation campaign in US history and curb immigration, mainly from Latin American nations. The order affects about 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came to the US under a scheme launched in October 2022 by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, and expanded in January the following year. They would lose their legal protection 30 days after the US Department of Homeland Security’s order is published in the Federal
RSS