WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet fell overnight as President Donald Trump refused to sign a year-end statement for COVID relief and spending that was considered a closed deal sudden objections.
The fate of the bipartisan package remained in the dark on Sunday as Trump continued to demand greater COVID emergency checks and complained of “pork” spending. Without the widespread funding provided by the massive measure, a government shutdown would occur when funds run out at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday.
“It’s a game of chess and we’re pawns,” said Lanetris Haines, a self-employed single mother of three in South Bend, Indiana, who will lose her weekly allowance of $ 129 a week unless Trump signs the package or succeeds. his unlikely quest for change.
Washington has been reeling since Trump threw the package into limbo after it already received widespread approval in both houses of Congress and after the White House assured Republican leaders that Trump would back it.
Instead, he attacked the bill’s plan to provide $ 600 COVID checks to most Americans – insisting it should be $ 2,000. House Republicans quickly rejected that idea during a rare Christmas Eve session. But Trump has not been influenced.
“I just want to get our amazing people $ 2,000 instead of the meager $ 600 in the bill right now,” Trump tweeted Saturday from Palm Beach, Florida, where he spends the vacation. “Stop the billions of dollars in ‘pork’ too.”
President-elect Joe Biden called on Trump to sign the bill immediately, as two federal unemployment assistance programs were due to expire on Saturday.
“It is the day after Christmas and millions of families do not know if they will be able to make ends meet as President Donald Trump refuses to sign an emergency economic relief bill passed by Congress by an overwhelming and bipartisan majority,” said Biden said in a statement. He accused Trump of “relinquishing responsibility” with “devastating consequences.”
“I have spoken to people who fear they will be evicted from their homes over the Christmas holidays, and it still could be if we don’t sign this bill,” said Representative Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat.
Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at Brookings Institution, has calculated that 11 million people would immediately lose aid from the programs without additional aid; millions more would use up other unemployment benefits within weeks.
Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said the number could be closer to 14 million as unemployment has increased since Thanksgiving.
“All these people and their families will suffer if Trump doesn’t sign the damn bill,” Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Liberal Economic Policy Institute, tweeted Wednesday.
How and when people are affected by the decline depends on the state they live in, the program they rely on, and when they applied for benefits. In some states, people with regular unemployment insurance could continue to receive payments under a program that extends benefits when the unemployment rate exceeds a certain threshold, Stettner said.
However, about 9.5 million people rely on the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which ends in full on Saturday. That program made unemployment insurance available to freelancers, handymen, and others who normally don’t qualify. After receiving their final checks, those recipients won’t be able to apply for more help after Saturday, Stettner said.
While payments can be received retroactively, each gap means more hardship and uncertainty for Americans already grappling with bureaucratic delays, often exhausting much of their savings to keep afloat while waiting for payments.
They are people like Earl McCarthy, a father of four who lives in South Fulton, Georgia and has been dependent on unemployment since he lost his job as a sales representative for an upscale senior community. He said he will have no income by the second week of January if Trump doesn’t sign the bill.
McCarthy said he had already burned out much of his savings while waiting five months to receive his unemployment benefits. After leaving weekly reports with the unemployment agency, McCarthy contacted the South Fulton mayor’s office and then asked his state legislative representative for help. In November he finally started to receive payments.
“The whole experience was awful,” said McCarthy, who receives about $ 350 a week in unemployment insurance.
“For me, I shudder to think that if I hadn’t saved anything or had an emergency fund in those five months, where would we have been?” he said. “It will be difficult if the president does not sign this bill.”
The bill awaiting Trump’s signing would also trigger a $ 300 weekly federal supplement to unemployment benefits.
Sharon Shelton Corpening had hoped the extra help would allow her 83-year-old mother, with whom she lives, to stop eating her Social Security benefits in order to earn their $ 1,138 rent.
Corpening, who lives in the Atlanta area, had launched a freelance content strategy company that just got off the ground before the pandemic hit, causing some of its contracts to fall through. She receives about $ 125 a week under the pandemic unemployment program and says she won’t be able to pay her bills in about a month. This despite her temporary work for the US census and as an election officer.
“We are on the brink,” said Corpening, who is lobbying for Unemployment Action, a Center for People’s Democracy project to fight for relief. “Another month, if so. Then everything is gone. “
Trump, meanwhile, has spent his final days playing golf in the office and angrily tweeting as he refuses to accept his loss to Biden in the Nov. 3 election. On Saturday, he lashed out again at members of his own party for not participating in his quest to try to overturn the election results with groundless claims of massive voter fraud that have been repeatedly rejected by the courts.
“If a Democratic presidential candidate rigged and stole an election, with evidence of such acts at a level never seen before, the Democratic senators would consider it an act of war and fight to the death,” he scolded. He said Mitch McConnell, majority leader of the Senate, and his Republicans “just want to let it pass. NO COMBAT! “
Trump also lashed out at the Supreme Court, the Justice Department and the FBI when he appeared to be encouraging his supporters to meet in Washington on January 6, the day Congress counts electoral college votes – though a similar event last month turned into violence. , where several people were stabbed in the streets of the capital.
In addition to freezing unemployment benefits, Trump’s lack of action on the bill would lead to expulsion protections and another round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants and theaters, along with money to help schools and vaccine distribution. .
The relief is also linked to a $ 1.4 trillion government funding bill to keep the federal government afloat.
Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.