United States President Donald Trump on Sunday signed a massive $900 billion-worth coronavirus relief and government funding package into law, averting a federal government shutdown in a crisis of his own making, reported BBC.
The relief package, which combines $900 billion in Covid-19 aid with government funding through September 2021, was passed by large majorities in both houses of Congress on December 21. The package will provide money for the distribution of vaccines, funds for schools, small businesses, hospitals and American families, and money needed to keep the government open for the remaining fiscal year, according to The New York Times.
Trump had refused to approve the legislation for days after receiving it, and had he not signed the bill by Monday midnight, a partial government shutdown would have begun. But his delay in signing the package still cost millions of Americans a week of unemployment benefits and new stimulus cheques, as two pandemic-related programmes expired on Saturday.
The bill includes a payment of $600 (approximately Rs 44,000) to Americans earning less than $75,000 (Approximately Rs 55 lakh) a year. Trump had demanded that Congress change the bill to increase the size of stimulus checks for struggling Americans to $2,000 (Approximately Rs 1.5 lakh) from $600 and also cut some other spending. But Republicans in Congress refused to agree to the change.
It was not immediately clear why Trump, who leaves office on January 20 after losing November’s election to President-elect Joe Biden, changed his mind on the stimulus package. He had been under intense pressure from lawmakers on both sides.
Trump said he was signing the bill with “a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed,” according to Reuters. “Much more money is coming,” he said in a statement, though he did not provide any explanation as to what he meant by this.
In a statement published on his transition website on Saturday, Biden described Trump’s refusal to sign the bill as an “abdication of responsibility”. “It is the day after Christmas, and millions of families don’t know if they’ll be able to make ends meet because of President Donald Trump’s refusal to sign an economic relief bill approved by Congress with an overwhelming and bipartisan majority,” Biden said.
Americans are living through a bitter holiday season amid the coronavirus pandemic that has affected 1.9 crore people and killed nearly 3,30,000 in the United States, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
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