Biden unveils US$1.9 trillion rescue plan
WILMINGTON, United States: President-elect Joe Biden unveiled plans Friday for fighting Covid and injecting US$1.9 trillion into a battered US economy, but already his ambitious first 100 days agenda is overshadowed by the looming Senate trial of his soon-to-be predecessor Donald Trump.
Biden promised ‘a new chapter’ for the nation on the day after Trump became the first US president to ever be impeached twice, as the incoming Democrat sought to seize the narrative in a primetime address and get Americans looking forward again.
“We will come back,” he said in a speech from his hometown of Wilmington.
“We didn’t get into all this overnight. We won’t get out of it overnight. And we can’t do it as a separated and divided nation,” he said.
“The only way we can do it is to come together, to come together as fellow Americans.”
With his Democrats narrowly controlling both houses of Congress, Biden, 78, has a shot at passing what would be the third massive pandemic aid package.
What he is less keen to talk about, however, is the impending trial of Trump, something that will introduce a potentially nightmarish mix of scheduling complications and political drama into an already tense Senate.
In his 25-minute televised speech Biden made no mention of Trump, impeachment or the deadly violence that nearly overwhelmed Washington last week.
Instead he addressed ‘the twin crises of a pandemic and this sinking economy’, a challenge exceeding even that which faced him as vice president to Barack Obama when they assumed office following the 2008 financial crisis.
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to hit new peaks, the vaccination programme is stumbling, and there are fears the economic recovery from the cratering of 2020 could backslide.
His proposal, dubbed the
American Rescue Plan, will include a host of measures aimed at revitalising the world’s largest economy.
Among those are raising the minimum wage to US$15 an hour, aiding struggling state and local governments, safely reopening schools, rolling out a massive Covid-19 vaccination campaign, extending unemployment benefits and boosting the size of stimulus checks Congress approved last month.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said they would hit the ground running in order to assure the plan’s success.
“We will get right to work to turn President-elect Biden’s vision into legislation that will pass both chambers and be signed into law,” they said in a joint statement.
Biden, who will be sworn in Jan 20, is also promising to get vaccinations off the ground, with an eye-catching slogan of 100 million shots administered in the first 100 days.
The incoming president plans to tackle all of this at the same time, putting one of the darkest periods of American history in the rearview mirror.
It’s a tall order.
Yet Biden takes office with one advantage he was not expecting even a few weeks ago: full, if razor thin, control of Congress.
Shock victories by Democrats in Georgia’s two Senate runoff races this month mean Democrats will have slim majorities in both chambers when he takes over.
The elephant in the room, however, is impeachment.
Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives Wednesday for ‘incitement of insurrection’ by egging on a huge crowd of his supporters to march against Congress on Jan 6. — AFP
We didn’t get into all this overnight. We won’t get out of it overnight. And we can’t do it as a separated and divided nation. The only way we can do it is to come together, to come together as fellow Americans.
Joe Biden