WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Capitol Hill negotiators sealed a deal on a $900 billion COVID-19 economic relief package, finally delivering long-overdue help to businesses and individuals and providing money to deliver vaccines to a nation eager for them.
The package, expected to draw votes in Congress on Monday, would establish a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefit and a $600 direct stimulus payment to most Americans, along with a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses and money for schools, health care providers and renters facing eviction.
It came together Sunday after months of battling and posturing, but the negotiating dynamic changed in Republicans’ favor after the election and as the end of the congressional session neared. President-elect Joe Biden was eager for a deal to deliver long-awaited help to suffering people and a boost to the economy, even though it was less than half the size that Democrats wanted this fall.
Biden praised the bipartisan spirit that produced the measure, which he called “just the beginning.”
“This is a model for the challenging work ahead for our nation,” Biden said Sunday in a statement.
House leaders informed lawmakers that they would vote on the legislation on Monday, and the Senate was likely to vote on Monday, too. Lawmakers were eager to leave Washington and close out a tumultuous year.
“There will be another major rescue package for the American people,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in announcing the agreement for the relief bill. “It is packed with targeted policies to help struggling Americans who have already waited too long.”
Democrats acknowledged it wasn’t as robust a relief package as they initially sought — or, they say, the country needs. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed more to come once President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
“It is a first step,” she said. “We have to do more.”
A fight over Federal Reserve emergency powers was resolved Saturday night by the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, and conservative Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. That breakthrough led to a final round of negotiations Sunday.
Still, delays in finalizing the agreement prompted the House to pass a one-day stopgap spending bill to prevent a government shutdown at midnight Sunday. The Senate was likely to pass the measure Sunday night as well.
The final agreement would be the largest spending measure yet. It combined $900 billion for COVID-19 relief with a $1.4 trillion government-wide funding plan and lots of other unrelated measures on taxes, health, infrastructure and education. The government-wide funding would keep the government open through September.
Passage neared as coronavirus cases and deaths spiked and evidence piled up that the economy was struggling. The legislation had been held up by months of dysfunction, posturing and bad faith. But talks turned serious in recent days as lawmakers on both sides finally faced the deadline of acting before leaving Washington for Christmas.
“This bill is a good bill. Tonight is a good night. But it is not the end of the story, it is not the end of the job,” Schumer told reporters. “Anyone who thinks this bill is enough does not know what’s going on in America.”
The $300 per week bonus jobless benefit was one half the supplemental federal unemployment benefit provided under the $1.8 billion CARES Act in March and would be limited to 11 weeks instead of 16 weeks. The direct $600 stimulus payment to most people would also be half the March payment, subject to the same income limits in which an individual’s payment began to phase out after $75,000.
The CARES Act was credited with keeping the economy from falling off a cliff amid widespread lockdowns this spring, but Republicans controlling the Senate cited debt concerns in pushing against Democratic demands. Republican politicians, starting with President Donald Trump, focused more on reopening the economy and less on taxpayer-financed steps like supplemental jobless benefits.
Progress came after a bipartisan group of pragmatists and moderates devised a $908 billion plan that built a middle ground position that the top four leaders of Congress — the GOP and Democratic leaders of both the House and Senate — used as the basis for their talks. The lawmakers urged leaders on both sides to back off of hard-line positions.
“We put our heads down and worked around the clock for nearly a month to produce a bipartisan, bicameral bill to address the emergency needs of our country,” the bipartisan group of about a dozen lawmakers said in a statement. “Our consensus bill was the foundation of this final package.”
Republicans were most intent on reviving the Paycheck Protection Program with $284 billion, which would cover a second round of PPP grants to especially hard-hit businesses. Democrats won set-asides for low-income and minority communities.
Late-breaking decisions would limit $300 per week bonus jobless benefits — one half the supplemental federal unemployment benefit provided under the CARES Act in March — to 11 weeks instead of 16 weeks as before. The direct $600 stimulus payment to most people would be half the March payment, subject to the same income limits in which an individual’s payment begins to phase out after $75,000.
After the announcement, Schumer and Pelosi, D-Calif., announced additional details, including $25 billion in rental assistance, $15 billion for theaters and other live venues, $82 billion for local schools, colleges and universities, and $10 billion for child care.
The governmentwide appropriations bill would fund agencies through next September. That measure was likely to provide a last $1.4 billion installment for Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall as a condition of winning his signature.
The bill was an engine to carry much of Capitol Hill’s unfinished business, including an almost 400-page water resources bill that targets $10 billion for 46 Army Corps of Engineers flood control, environmental and coastal protection projects. Another addition would extend a batch of soon-to-expire tax breaks, including one for craft brewers, wineries and distillers.
It also would carry numerous clean energy provisions, $7 billion to increase access to broadband, $4 billion to help other nations vaccinate their people, $14 billion for cash-starved transit systems, Amtrak and airports.
Democrats failed in a monthslong battle to deliver direct fiscal relief to states and local governments, but they successfully pressed for $22 billion would help states and local governments with COVID-19-related health expenses like testing and vaccines.
The end-of-session rush also promised relief for victims of shockingly steep surprise medical bills, a phenomenon that often occurs when providers drop out of insurance company networks.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Top negotiators in Congress have sealed a deal on an almost $1 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package. Lawmakers announced the agreement Sunday after days of negotiations, and passage by Congress is expected Monday.
The agreement would establish a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefits and $600 direct stimulus payments to most Americans, along with a fresh round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses and funding for schools, health care providers, and renters facing eviction.
The final agreement was reached after a breakthrough over Federal Reserve emergency powers was resolved by the Senate’s top Democrat and a senior conservative Republican.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Top congressional lawmakers struck a late-night agreement on the last major obstacle to a COVID-19 economic relief package costing nearly $1 trillion, clearing the way for votes as early as Sunday.
The breakthrough involved a fight over Federal Reserve emergency powers and was resolved by the Senate’s top Democrat and a senior conservative Republican.
Congressional aides confirmed the agreement late Saturday, which clears the way for an expected deal Sunday on the aid bill. The measure is finally nearing passage amid a frightening spike in cases and deaths and accumulating evidence that the economy is struggling through the pandemic.
“We’re getting very close, very close,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., as he left the Capitol late Saturday. Schumer spent much of the day going back and forth with GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Toomey had been pressing a provision to close down Fed lending facilities. Democrats and the White House said it was too broadly worded and would have tied the hands of the incoming Biden administration.
The compromise, aides said, preserved Toomey’s goal but retained the Fed’s existing powers to restart similar facilities in the future.
The COVID-19 legislation has been held up after months of dysfunction, posturing and bad faith. But talks turned serious last week as lawmakers on both sides finally faced the deadline of acting before leaving Washington for Christmas.
The relief bill, lawmakers and aides say, would establish a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefits and $600 direct stimulus payments to most Americans. It would provide a fresh round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses and money for schools, health care providers and renters facing eviction.
The measure is being added to a $1.4 trillion spending bill and lots of other unfinished work, including previously stalled legislation to extend tax breaks, authorize water projects, and address the problem of surprise sky-high medical bills for out-of-network procedures.
It would be virtually impossible for lawmakers to read and fully understand the measure before a House vote expected Sunday night.
Schumer said he hoped both the House and Senate would vote on the measure Sunday. That would take more cooperation than the Senate can usually muster, but a government shutdown deadline loomed at midnight Sunday and all sides were eager to leave for the holiday.
Toomey defended his provision in a Senate speech, saying the emergency powers were designed to stabilize capital markets at the height of the pandemic this spring and were expiring at the end of the month anyway. The language he had sought would block the Biden administration from restarting them.
Toomey has a stubborn streak and Democrats held firm as well, but both sides saw the need for a compromise.
The Fed’s emergency programs provided loans to small and mid-size businesses and bought state and local government bonds. Those bond purchases made it easier for those governments to borrow, at a time when their finances were under pressure from job losses and health costs stemming from the pandemic.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last month that those programs, along with two that purchased corporate bonds, would close at the end of the year, prompting an initial objection by the Fed. Under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law passed after the Great Recession, the Fed can only set up emergency programs with the support of the treasury secretary.
Democrats also said that Toomey was trying to limit the Fed’s ability to boost the economy, just as Biden prepared to take office.
“This is about existing authorities that the Fed has had for a very long time, to be able to use in an emergency,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “It’s about a lending authority for helping small businesses, state government, local government in the middle of a crisis.”
Toomey disputed that, saying his proposal “is emphatically not a broad overhaul of the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending authority.” His office issued a statement early Sunday calling the compromise with Schumer “an unqualified victory for taxpayers” that met Toomey’s aim of shutting down the emergency facility.
A Senate vote would follow, possibly on Monday. One more short-term funding bill would be needed to avoid the looming deadline — or a partial shutdown of nonessential agencies would start on Monday.
The emerging agreement would deliver more than $300 billion in aid to businesses as well as the extra $300-per-week for the jobless and renewal of state benefits that would otherwise expire right after Christmas. It included $600 direct payments to individuals; vaccine distribution funds; and money for renters, schools, the Postal Service and people needing food aid.
It would be the first significant legislative response to the pandemic since the landmark CARES Act passed virtually unanimously in March, delivering $1.8 trillion in aid, more generous $600 per week bonus jobless benefits and $1,200 direct payments to individuals.
The governmentwide appropriations bill would fund agencies through next September. That measure was likely to provide a last $1.4 billion installment for President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall as a condition of winning his signature.