$2.2 trillion relief bill clears Senate unanimously
WASHINGTON — The Senate unanimously passed a $2.2 trillion emergency relief bill Wednesday night aimed at limiting the financial trauma that the coronavirus pandemic is inflicting on the United States, and lawmakers acted with unusual speed to produce the largest economic rescue package in the nation’s history.
The sprawling legislation, which passed 96-0, would send checks to more than 150 million American households, set up enormous loan programs for businesses large and small, pump money into unemployment insurance programs, greatly boost spending on hospitals, and much more.
Illustrating how grave the situation has become in the United States, the most liberal and conservative senators joined to support the mammoth spending bill.
The legislation’s goal is to flood the economy with money at a time of nearly unprecedented financial chaos, with entire states on lockdown, many businesses closed, and the number of infections and deaths from the coronavirus quickly on the rise.
The Senate vote sends the bill to the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., expects it to be approved Friday morning. President Donald Trump said he intends to sign it immediately.
“Our nation obviously is going through a kind of crisis that is totally unprecedented in living memory,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said ahead of the vote, after which the Senate intended to recess until April 20 unless urgent legislative action is needed before then.
“Let’s stay connected and continue to collaborate on the best ways to keep helping our states and our country through this pandemic,” McConnell said. “Let’s continue to pray for one another, for all of our families, and for our country.”
In a fresh reminder of the dangers reaching into the Capitol itself, a spokesman for Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the No. 2 Senate Republican, announced just minutes before the vote that Thune was returning to South Dakota to self-quarantine because he was feeling unwell.
The vote came on the eve of the release of new figures from the Labor Department on the number of workers who applied for unemployment benefits during the week ending March 21. The number is expected to set a record, with estimates ranging from 2 million to 4 million. The prior record was just under 700,000 during a week in October 1982.
“The gears of the American economy have ground to a halt,” said Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “Our country has faced immense challenges before, but rarely so many at the same time.”
The bill would extend $1,200 to most American adults and $500 for most children, create a $500 billion lending program for businesses, cities and states, and a $367 billion employee retention fund for small businesses. It would direct $130 billion to hospitals and provide four months of expanded unemployment insurance, among other things.
Lawmakers and the White House were bombarded with lobbyists and special interest groups seeking assistance during the negotiations, and the price tag rose from $850 billion to $2.2 trillion in just a matter of days.
With confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States climbing swiftly to over 65,000 Wednesday with more than 900 deaths, lawmakers acknowledged that no amount of economic relief from Congress could stop the pain for the American public. In addition to layoffs, many workers are dealing with salary reductions or furloughs. And despite Trump’s push to restart much of the economy by April 12, there are growing signs that the drag on businesses could last well into the second half of the year.
Wednesday night’s vote capped drama-filled days of up-and-down negotiations over legislation originally introduced by McConnell a week ago, but which Democrats viewed as unacceptably tilted toward corporations. They negotiated major changes, including an approximately $250 billion increase in spending on unemployment benefits that would expand eligibility and allow laid-off workers to receive an additional $600 a week for four months, on top of the benefits their state unemployment agencies pay.
Schumer touted the measure as “unemployment insurance on steroids,” but in one of the final hang-ups Wednesday, a group of four conservative senators raised concerns that the program would provide incentives for people to leave the workforce since in some cases they might end up making more on unemployment than they would at their job. Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke with the objecting senators — Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Rick Scott of Florida — with Mnuchin explaining that it was the most efficient way to structure the program since the alternative would require working with a patchwork of different state unemployment systems.
An amendment the senators offered to try to scale back the new program was defeated Wednesday.
Late resistance also came from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, who voiced complaints Wednesday that the legislation didn’t do enough to help his state, the hardest hit in the country by the virus, where doctors and hospitals are pleading for relief.
One final holdup, according to two congressional aides, surrounded one final condition for the more than half-trillion in corporate rescue funding: Schumer insisted on language requiring the terms of those loans to be disclosed to the public within seven days. The change was made, and the final bill circulated to Senate offices shortly after 10 p.m. EDT.
The legislation ensures that taxpayer-backed loans cannot go to firms controlled by Trump, other White House officials or members of Congress. This would suggest that Trump-owned properties, including hotels that have been hurt by the downturn, cannot seek taxpayer assistance.
The airline industry, which has suffered huge losses in the past two months because of canceled flights and travel restrictions, would be a top recipient in the bill. Passenger airlines would qualify for
$25 billion in loans and certain other guarantees and could have access to $25 billion in things like grants, which might not have to be repaid.
Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., said he would have preferred long-term low-interest loans to airlines instead of grants, “But we had this argument, we had this discussion, and it turned out the way it did.”
Cargo airlines and suppliers would qualify for a different batch of money.
And another provision of the bill would authorize $17 billion in assistance for companies deemed crucial for national security, language that was written in part to ensure assistance for Boeing, three people with knowledge of the internal deliberations said.
There’s also an employee retention tax credit for many firms hurt by the coronavirus fallout and provisions to allow businesses to defer payment of payroll taxes for two years.