Deal reached on COVID-19 relief; votes expected Monday in House, Senate
House and Senate votes are expected Monday on bill
WASHINGTON — Top Capitol Hill negotiators sealed a deal Sunday on an almost $900 billion C OVID19 economic relief package, finally delivering long-overdue help to businesses and individuals and providing money to deliver vaccines to a nation eager for them.
The agreement, announced by Senate leaders, would establish a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefits and $600 direct stimulus payments to most Americans, along with a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses and money for schools, health care providers and renters facing eviction.
The House was expected to vote on the legislation Monday, said a spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. The House would pass a one-day stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown at midnight Sunday. The Senate was likely to vote Monday, too. Lawmakers were eager to leave Washington and close out a tumultuous year.
“There will be another major rescue package for the American people,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in announcing the agreement for a relief bill that would total almost $900 billion. “It is packed with targeted policies to help struggling Americans whohave already waited too long.”
A breakthrough came late Saturday in a fight over Federal Reserve emergency powers that was resolved by the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, and conservative Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. That led to a final roundof negotiations.
Thefinal agreement is the largest spending measure yet. It combines COVID19 relief with a $1.4 trillion governmentwide funding plan and lots of other unrelated measures on taxes, health, infrastructure and education.
Passage is nearing as coronavirus cases and deaths spike amid evidence the economy is struggling.
Late-breaking decisions would limit the $300 per week bonus jobless benefits — one-half the supplemen-tal federal unemployment benefit provided under the CARES Act in March — to 10 weeks instead of 16 weeks as before. The direct $600 stimulus payment to most people is also half the March payment, subject to the same income limits in which an individual’s payment begins to phase out after $75,000.
President Donald Trump is supportive, particularly of the push for providing more direct payments. “GET IT DONE,” he said in a tweet late Saturday.
It would be the first significant response to the pandemic since the $1.8 trillion CARES Act passed in March.
The legislation was held up by months of dysfunction, posturing and bad faith. But talks turned serious last week as lawmakers on both sides finally faced the deadline of acting before leaving Washington for Christmas.
Lawmakers had hoped to pass the bill this weekend and avoid the need for a stopgap spending bill, but progress slowed Saturday as Toomey pressed for the inclusion of a provision to close down the Fed’s lending facilities. Democrats andthe White House said itwas too broadly worded and would have tied the hands of the incoming Biden administration, but Republicans rallied to Toomey’s position.
The Fed’s emergency programs provided loans to small and midsize businesses and bought state and local government bonds. Those bond purchases made it easier for those governments to borrow, at a time when their finances were under pressure from job losses and health costs stemming fromthe pandemic.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last month that those programs, along with two that purchased corporate bonds, would close at theendof the year, prompting an initial objection by the Fed. Under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law passed after the Great Recession, the Fed can only set up emergency programs with the support of the treasury secretary.
Toomey said the emergency powers were designed to stabilize capital markets at the height of the pandemic this spring and were expiring at the end of the month anyway. Democrats said that Toomey was trying to limit the Fed’s ability to boost the economy, just as President-elect Joe Biden prepared to take office.
After the announcement, Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D- Calif., announced additional details, including $25 billion in rental assistance, $15 billion for theaters and other live venues ,$82 billion for local schools, colleges and universities, and $10 billion for child care.
The governmentwide appropriations bill would fund agencies through next September. That measure was likely to provide a last $ 1.4 billion installment for Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall as a condition of winning his signature.
The bill was an engine to carry much of Capitol Hill’s unfinished business, including an almost 400-page water resources bill that targets $10 billion for 46 flood control, environmental and coastal protection projects.
The end-of-session rush also promised relief for victims of shockingly steep surprise medical bills, a phenomenon that often occurs when providers drop out of insurance company networks.
Notably absent from the final compromise were the two thorniest policy impediments that had stood in its way for months. In order to secure a deal just before Christmas and allow Congress to adjourn, Republicans agreed to drop a sweeping coronavirus liability shield for businesses and Democrats agreed to omit a direct stream of aid to state and local governments.