WASHINGTON – The United States House of Representatives passed an enormous US$1.9 trillion (RM7.7 trillion) coronavirus relief package early today, hailed by Democrats as a critical step in funnelling fresh funding towards vaccinations, overburdened local governments, and millions of families devastated by the pandemic.
Four days after the Covid-19 death toll surpassed 500,000 in the US, the sprawling measure backed by President Joe Biden and seen as a moral imperative by many now heads to the Senate for consideration next week.
“After 12 months of death and despair, the American recovery begins tonight,” congressman Brendan Boyle told the House chamber shortly before lawmakers approved the package in a rare post-midnight vote of 219 to 212.
No Republicans voted for the bill.
The sharply partisan result comes weeks after Biden’s January 20 inauguration, when he called for unity in the face of a once-in-a-century health crisis.
The package cleared the House despite a major setback for Democrats when a key Senate official on Thursday ruled that the final version of the bill cannot include a minimum wage hike.
Biden had campaigned extensively on raising the national minimum wage to US$15 an hour, from a rate of $7.25 that has stood since 2009.
He aimed to include it in the rescue plan, which directly provides US$1,400 cheques to most Americans, and allots billions of dollars to boost vaccine delivery, help schools reopen, and fund state and local governments.
It extends unemployment benefits, set to expire in mid-March, by about six months, as well as a moratorium on evictions for millions of people struggling to pay rent.
The bill is on track to be the second-largest-ever US stimulus, after the US$2 trillion package Donald Trump signed last March to fight the pandemic’s devastating spread.
Even as Senate members ruled against including the minimum wage language in the bill as written under budget reconciliation rules, Democrats kept the provision, highlighting their “fight for 15” as a top party priority.
“We will not rest until we pass the US$15 minimum wage,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Even without the wage hike, she said, the bill is critical, and it would be “catastrophic” if it does not become law.
“The American people need to know that their government is there for them,” she told the chamber.
“As President Biden has said, help is on the way.”
‘Dead of night’
Republicans fumed over the bill’s historically high cost – and the optics of holding such a consequential vote in the predawn hours.
“Democrats are so embarrassed by all the non-Covid-19 waste in this bill that they are jamming it through in the dead of night,” said House minority leader Kevin McCarthy.
The measure is “bloated”, partisan and “unfocused”, with the majority of funding going to projects not directly related to fighting the pandemic, he said.
McCarthy and his fellow Republicans accused Democrats of using the pandemic to push forward a liberal wish list.
The package “just throws out money without accountability”, he said.
In the 100-member Senate, the rules of so-called reconciliation relate to budgetary bills that are allowed to bypass Republican filibuster efforts and pass with just a simple majority, rather than the typical 60 votes.
The parliamentarians concluded that the wage hike does not meet the standard, and since there is no Republican support for the bill in the evenly split Senate, the measure will be taken out in order for Covid-19 relief to pass. – AFP, February 27, 2021
