Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced early Wednesday morning that they had secured a deal on a $2 trillion response bill for the COVID-19 outbreak.
“After days of intense discussions, the Senate has reached a bipartisan agreement on a historic relief package for this pandemic,” McConnell said in a statement. “We’re going to pass this legislation later today.”
Schumer described the bill as “largest rescue package in American history.”
“Like all compromises, this bill is far from perfect,” he said during a speech on the Senate floor. “But we believe the legislation has been improved significantly to warrant its quick consideration and passage, and because many Democrats and Republicans were willing to do the serious and hard work, the bill is much better off than where it started.”
Schumer released a number of details on the plan, including four months of unemployment insurance instead of three. The deal also prohibits “businesses controlled by the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and heads of Executive Departments from receiving loans or investments from Treasury programs.”
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, a key negotiator in Congress’ coronavirus relief package on behalf of the Trump administration, told the New York Times that President Donald Trump would sign the bill.
“I’ve spoken to the President many times today, and he’s very pleased with this legislation and the impact that this is going to have,” Mnuchin said.
White House legislative affairs chief Eric Ueland told Politico that the full text of the bill will be published later on Wednesday.
Just came here to say that I knew this would pass. The GOP will do everything in their power to prop up Trump. Not one word about Debt, Deficit or Austerity when a Republican legacy is threatened.
So inasmuch as we now have the bill, we don’t yet know (because it hasn’t been published to the public yet) how many poison pills were inserted into the original from the House. You know they’re coming and we’ll all be paying for it for a while.
It’s not that I don’t trust the Senate. But I don’t.
I still don’t understand the insistence that Nancy is the problem in all of this. She sent a clean bill to the Senate. I’ll put good money on the idea that the Senate messed it up big time, but the whole mess will still be blamed on her.
Wow…30 pieces of silver for ONE TIME for Mainstreet but buckets of gold for Wallstreet!
Mainstreet RethugniCONS are so easy to turn into socialists while Wallstreet RethugniCONS are BIGLY Swamp Creatures more than ever…whinning to Covidiot Trump and going to Jared for their bigger than usual “corporate socialism”!
BTW, aren’t the airline and cargo industries part of the the Major Corporate Liquidity $500B stimulus? Why another separate aids for these two? What about another separate “aids” to Mainstreet huh?
What happened to the $500Billion Slush Fund which Covidiot Trump said he will oversee?
Addendum:
While major corporate liquidity has the lion share of the Covid-19 Stimulus, Mainstreet workers ie from Amazon do not have sick pay, insurance and sanitizer! What about their health and liquidity?
I know people really need the money but it just feels like it will all be for nothing if we aren’t going to do what it takes to a really tackle the issue…
What don’t you understand about the GOP senate using every opportunity to make this into a political foodfight? Sorry, I’m being snarky here, but my understanding of the delay had to do with Schumer meeting with Mnunchin to negotiate over the $500 billion dollars of aid to ‘distressed’ industries, with zero oversight and a built in cone of silence for six months. The GOP needed cover so they started carping about tax credits for wind and solar (which would have permitted these industries to add jobs). This allowed them to claim that Dems were using this as an excuse to pass the Green New Deal.