Extract from ABC News
Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet have lapsed after President Donald Trump failed to sign an end-of-year COVID-19 relief and spending bill that had been considered a done deal before his sudden objections.
Key points:
- A partial government shutdown could begin on Tuesday
- Mr Trump insists the bill's plan to provide $US600 COVID relief checks should be raised to $US2,000
- Many economists agree the bill's aid is too low but say the immediate support is necessary
Mr Trump stunned Republicans and Democrats alike when he said this week he was unhappy with the US$2.3 trillion ($3.02 trillion) pandemic aid and spending package, which provides $892 billion in badly needed coronavirus relief, including extending special unemployment benefits expiring on December 26, and $US1.4 trillion for normal government spending.
Without Mr Trump's signature on the bill by midnight Saturday night (US time), about 14 million people will lose those extra benefits, according to Labor Department data.
A partial government shutdown will begin on Tuesday unless Congress can agree a stop-gap government funding bill before then.
"It's a chess game and we are pawns," said Lanetris Haines, a self-employed single mother of three in South Bend, Indiana, who will lose her $129 weekly jobless benefit as a result of the package not being signed.
Washington has been reeling since Mr Trump threw the package into limbo after it had already won sweeping approval in both houses of Congress and after the White House assured Republican leaders that Mr Trump would support it.
Instead, he has assailed the bill's plan to provide $US600 COVID relief checks to most Americans — insisting it should be $US2,000.
House Republicans swiftly rejected that idea during a rare Christmas Eve session. But Mr Trump has not been swayed.
Many economists agree the bill's aid is too low but say the immediate support is still welcome and necessary.
"All these folks and their families will suffer if Mr Trump doesn't sign the damn bill," Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, tweeted Wednesday.
However, she said the unemployed could potentially receive payments retroactively if the bill is eventually signed.
'Abdication of responsibility'
President-elect Joe Biden called on Mr Trump to sign the bill as two federal programs providing unemployment aid were set to expire Saturday.
"This abdication of responsibility has devastating consequences … This bill is critical. It needs to be signed into law now," Mr Biden, who is spending the holiday in his home state of Delaware, said in a statement.
Americans face an unprecedented holiday season amid a pandemic that has killed nearly 330,000 people in the United States, with a daily death toll now repeatedly well over 3,000 people, the highest since the pandemic began.
"I've been talking to people who are scared they're going to be kicked out from their homes, during the Christmas holidays, and still might be if we don't sign this bill," said Representative Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat.
Sharon Shelton Corpening had been hoping the extra help would allow her 83-year-old mother, with whom she lives, to stop eating into her social security payments to make their $1,138 rent.
Ms Corpening, who lives in the Atlanta area, had launched a freelance content strategy business that was just taking off before the pandemic hit, prompting several of her contracts to fall through.
She is receiving about $125 a week under the pandemic unemployment program and says she will be unable to pay her bills in about a month.
On Saturday, Mr Trump remained at his Mar-a-Lago club, with minimal staff but with members of his family, including senior advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
He has been sending tweets repeating his baseless claims about election fraud and accusing his fellow Republicans of abandoning him in his bid to overturn the election result, already shot down multiple times by US courts.
He is yet to acknowledge Mr Biden's November 3 victory.
In addition to freezing unemployment benefits, Mr Trump's lack of action on the bill will lead to the expiration of eviction protections and put on hold a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants and theatre's, along with money to help schools and vaccine distribution.
The relief bill is also attached to a $US1.4 trillion government funding bill to keep the federal government operating.
ABC/wires
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