Congress agrees on COVID aid, government funding

WASHINGTON (AP) – Top Capitol Hill negotiators signed a deal Sunday on a nearly $ 1 trillion COVID-19 economic aid package, finally delivering long-awaited aid to businesses and individuals and providing money to deliver vaccines to a country that she likes.

The agreement, announced by senate leaders, would secure a temporary supplemental unemployment benefit of $ 300 a week and $ 600 direct stimulus payments to most Americans, along with a new round of grants for hard-hit businesses and money for schools, health care providers, and eviction tenants.

The House was expected to vote on the legislation Monday, a spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. The House would pass a one-day emergency stop to avoid a government shutdown at midnight on Sunday. The senate was also likely to vote on Monday. Lawmakers were eager to leave Washington and close a tumultuous year.

“There is yet to be a major bailout for the American people,” said Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Announcing the deal for an emergency bill totaling nearly $ 900 billion. “It’s full of targeted policies to help Americans who have waited too long.”

A breakthrough came late Saturday in a fight for the Federal Reserve’s emergency powers, which was resolved by top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York and conservative Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. That led to a final round of negotiations.

The final agreement is the largest spending measure to date. It combines COVID-19 aid with a $ 1.4 trillion government funding plan and a host of other unrelated tax, health, infrastructure, and education measures.

The transition is now nearing coronavirus cases and deaths peaking, and evidence is piling up that the economy is struggling.

Late decisions would limit the $ 300 per week unemployment benefit – half of the supplemental federal unemployment benefit provided under the CARES Act in March – to 10 weeks instead of 16 weeks as before. The $ 600 direct incentive payment to most people is also half of the March payment, subject to the same income limits in which a person’s payment begins to taper off after $ 75,000.

In particular, President Donald Trump supports the push for more direct payments. “GET IT DONE,” he said in a tweet Saturday night.

It would be the first significant legislative response to the pandemic since the $ 1.8 trillion CARES bill was passed almost unanimously in March.

Months of dysfunction, attitude and bad faith held up the legislation. But the talks got serious last week when lawmakers on both sides finally saw the acting deadline before leaving Washington for Christmas.

Lawmakers had hoped to pass the bill this weekend and avoid the need for a stopgap spending fix, but progress slowed Saturday as Toomey pushed for the inclusion of a provision to close the Fed’s credit facilities. Democrats and the White House said it was worded too broadly and would have tied the hands of the incoming Biden administration, but Republicans backed Toomey’s position.

The Fed’s emergency programs provided loans to small and medium-sized businesses and bought government and local government bonds. Those bond purchases made it easier for those governments to borrow, at a time when their finances were strained from job losses and health costs from the pandemic.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last month that those programs, along with two that bought corporate bonds, would shut down at the end of the year, prompting an initial objection from the Fed. Under the Dodd-Frank Financial Overhaul Act passed after the Great Recession, the Fed can only set up emergency programs with the support of the Treasury Secretary.

Toomey said the emergency powers were intended to stabilize capital markets at the height of the pandemic this spring and yet ended at the end of the month. Democrats said Toomey was trying to curtail the Fed’s ability to boost the economy, just as President-elect Joe Biden was preparing to take office.

The virus relief agreement would provide more than $ 300 billion in aid to businesses, as well as the additional $ 300 a week for unemployment and renewal of state benefits that would otherwise expire immediately after Christmas. It included $ 600 direct payments to individuals; funds for the distribution of vaccines; and money for tenants, schools, the postal service and people in need of food aid.

The government credit bill would fund the agencies until September next year. That move would likely provide a final $ 1.4 billion installment for the US-Mexico border wall as a condition of getting his signature.