‘There is hope’: Biden signs $1.9T COVID relief bill in first major legislative victory as president
Help is here.
President Biden signed one of the largest stimulus packages in American history into law on Thursday, pouring nearly $2 trillion into a wide-ranging effort to crush the coronavirus and revive the pandemic-ravaged U.S. economy.
In his first prime-time address as president after signing the bill, Biden touted the sweeping $1.9 trillion package as a historic juggernaut of immediate relief that includes direct stimulus checks, beefed-up unemployment benefits and various other forms of aid for businesses, states and COVID-19 vaccination efforts.
“There is hope and light and better days ahead,” Biden said in the East Room of the White House with the 50 state flags behind him as a backdrop. “This country will be vaccinated soon. Our economy will be on the mend. Our kids will be back in school, and we’ll have proven once again that this country can do anything — hard things, big things, important things.”
The so-called American Rescue Plan — which passed both chambers of Congress without any Republican support — marks the first major legislative victory for the president and gives his administration a major boost as it strives to end the pandemic that has killed more than 530,000 Americans.
The relief package’s most popular provision bankrolls $1,400 stimulus checks to individual taxpayers earning less than $75,000 per year, and $2,800 checks to married couples earning less than $150,000 jointly.
With the bill now signed, the Treasury Department is expected to quickly get to work on processing checks. Those who have direct deposits set up with the Internal Revenue Service could likely get their payments within days.
“People can expect to start seeing direct deposits hit their bank accounts as early as this weekend,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.
But the package also extends far beyond checks.
It includes hundreds of billions of dollars for coronavirus vaccination and testing efforts, school reopenings, budgetary relief for struggling state and local governments, rental assistance, food programs and aid for small and big industries, from restaurants and music venues to airlines and transit agencies.
The legislation also extends a $300-per-week federal unemployment aid bonus through September, and makes the first $10,200 earned in jobless benefits tax-free, providing a critical lifeline for the millions of Americans who remain out of work because of the pandemic.
In his primetime speech, which coincided with the one-year anniversary of coronavirus-related shutdowns in the U.S., Biden said he plans to travel the country in coming weeks to showcase to the American public how his relief package “meets this moment.”
“History, I believe, will record we faced and overcame one of the toughest and darkest periods in this nation’s history. Darkest we’ve ever known,” he said.
Beyond immediate, pandemic-related aid, the bill contains some policy provisions that Democrats see as pilot programs for future legislation.
One component expands eligibility for health insurance under the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, and gives states incentive to cover more low-income adults through Medicaid.
Also tucked into the bill is a beefed-up tax credit that would make low-income parents eligible for $300 stimulus check-styled payments per child per month, starting in July through the rest of the year. Many Democrats have voiced interest in making that credit permanent.
Biden initially wasn’t supposed to sign the bill until Friday, but moved it up after congressional leaders finished a bureaucratic process to formally enroll the bill faster than anticipated.
Psaki said Biden will still hold a celebratory ceremony at the White House on Friday with Democratic leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who played a major part in quickly getting the rescue package to the president’s desk.
“For workers, families, those who still want a vaccine, small businesses in hard-hit industries like restaurants, Broadway and beyond, help is on the way,” Schumer said.
Despite the upbeat tone, there’s a lingering bitterness for Biden in that his signature relief bill didn’t earn the support of a single Republican in Congress, giving the GOP a line of attack against a president who won election with a promise to unify the country.
Even though the U.S. economy remains in dire straits and hundreds of Americans continue to die from COVID-19 every day, Republicans on Capitol Hill insisted the $1.9 trillion measure was too costly and filled with left-wing priorities.
“This wasn’t a bill to finish off the pandemic, it was a multitrillion-dollar Trojan horse full of bad old liberal ideas,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a speech Thursday. “President Biden’s own staff keep calling this legislation quote ‘the most progressive bill in American history.’ Hardly the commonsense bipartisanship that the president promised.”
But Biden has justified the party-line passage by noting that polling shows the bill gets high marks from both Republican and Democratic voters. An Associated Press survey released last week found that a significant 44% of registered Republicans backed the package.
As an economic stimulus bill, Biden’s American Rescue Plan is second only in size to the $2.2 trillion CARES Act signed into law by then-President Donald Trump at the outset of the pandemic in March.
It’s not only Republicans who are disappointed by some aspects of Biden’s rescue plan.
Progressive Democrats remain furious with moderates in their own party who torpedoed a since-removed provision in the bill that would’ve boosted the federal minimum wage from $7.25-per-hour to $15-per-hour.
“This package must be the floor — not the ceiling,” said New York Rep. Mondaire Jones, a freshman progressive representing Westchester and Rockland Counties. “It is shameful that the Senate did not agree to keep the $15 minimum wage in the bill.”
