After delaying for nearly a week and under pressure from all sides, Donald Trump has finally signed a massive $900 billion stimulus bill on Sunday, which can be a boost for the millions of Americans and businesses damaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.
With Trump’s signature, the stimulus package will provide coronavirus “emergency response and relief” which will avoid a government shutdown on Tuesday.
“I am signing this bill to restore unemployment benefits, stop evictions, provide rental assistance, add money for PPP, return our airline workers back to work, add substantially more money for vaccine distribution, and much more,” the president said in a statement from his Christmas vacation at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Trump initially refused to put his signature on the relief package for days approved overwhelmingly by Congress following months of negotiation, calling it a “disgrace” and saying he wanted to give people “bigger one-off payments”.
Two federal unemployment benefit programs approved in March as part of an initial Covid-19 relief plan expired at midnight on Saturday, resulting in the estimated 12 million Americans temporarily lost unemployment benefits, according to The Century Foundation Think Tank.
The relief package worth $900bn passed by Congress on December 21 after months of negotiation, would extend those benefits as well as others set to expire in the days ahead. It is part of a $2.3tn spending package that includes $1.4tn for normal federal government spending.
In his statement, Trump, however, continued to push for the $600 direct payments to US taxpayers spelled out in the bill to be more than tripled and argued the legislation included too much excess spending on unrelated programs.
He has not said why he waited until the bill was already approved and finally decided to sign the bill into law. He had been under growing pressure from both sides of Congress.
President-elect Joe Biden, due to be sworn on January 20 after beating Trump in November’s election, had warned of “devastating consequences” on Saturday if the president continued his refusal.
“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,” Joe Biden said.
